Friday is Studio Day!

So - in my new, post-Random House life, every Friday is studio day. I look forward to it all week. My goal for today was to make something that I could sell during the TRAC Studio Tour coming up in December. I know that's a ways off still, but I suspect it will come sneaking up on me pretty fast. I have quilts to sell, but they're really expensive and I want to have something more affordable for people to buy. The obvious choice was purses.

I made this purse two or three years ago, have carried it ever since, and get tons of people asking me where they can buy one like it.

This is the other side of the purse. All the interest has made me think about selling them, of course, but there's a lot of labor in these. First I have to piece the quilt. Then I have to quilt the quilt. Then I applique over the piecing, and finally I actually have to sew the darn thing into a purse. Like I said, a lot of labor. But I do get a lot of questions, so today I decided to make another one to see just what the actual cost would be.


So here it is. There's still some tweaking that needs to be done. I've always thought the original beak and eyes were just a touch too big. I'm happy with the new beak, but now the eyes are too small and I'm not crazy about the black eyes on the mulberry bird. I also decided that I really like the birds sitting on a wire - it anchors them nicely. So tonight I'll do some more bird sketches and see what I come up with. The construction was just as labor-intensive as I remembered so next time I'll see if I can shave some time off. I'm hoping to have these in a few different colors in my shop by the end of the month - and hopefully at a semi-reasonable price. I'll probably do a downloadable pattern too.

I know this doesn't seem like much for a day's work - but I also started organizing my fabric closet too.
Can you tell which shelf I worked on today? I didn't want to tackle this until after we move into the new house (someday?) but I kind of had to do it to unbury my green fabrics.