Cutout Purse

Recently, I was contacted by a person who had bought one of my cork cutout purses at one of my shows. She said she'd been using that same cork purse almost every day for the past three years! It was well past its prime, and she was ready for another purse. She was able to hunt me down and purchased the exact same purse again. Now, that's a loyal customer.

The design of the cutout purse is very handy. Once you get used to having such easy access to your cell phone and keys, it's hard to go back to digging around inside another purse for those things.

Here is the cutout design in a few fun fabric prints for summer, now available in my Etsy shop.

Mother's Day is just around the corner! For the next week, use the code "mikimi" to get free shipping on anything in my Etsy shop.

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Cutting Out Leaves

Because I live in wine country, one of the my most popular items at show events is my cork wine tote. Giving a bottle of wine is great for almost any occasion, but it can sometimes seem too easy or impersonal. However, when the bottle of wine is given inside a handmade gift bag, and made of sustainable materials like cork and bamboo to boot, the gift takes on special meaning and lasts longer than the bottle of wine. In this case, it's a gift we hope will get re-gifted, again and again.

Like all my embellished cork items, I cut all the pieces by hand. I have envelopes that hold my paper templates that I have sketched out with a pencil on scrap paper. The leaf pattern template for the wine tote was a scraggly thing, filled with hundreds of pin holes from attaching and re-attaching it to the dark cork. In the evenings, a regular activity while watching TV was to cut the shapes and file them in my envelope filing system.

But when I got an order for 132 leaf-pattern wine totes (in addition to 132 striped wine totes), I knew I could not watch enough TV to cut that many leaves! Plus, I am very prone to carpal tunnel issues, and I needed to be able to use my hands for brushing my teeth and typing, amongst other things, after all the leaves were cut.

Like most women of a certain age, I used to be a scrapbooker. So I knew about die cuts and had old-fashioned die cut machines (i.e. Sizzix and the lesser known Zip-E-Mate, pictured above). These were the pre-cursor to today's fancy schmancy machines like the Cricut and I don't even know what else--computerized machines that seem to cost a fortune and will cut all kinds of intricate shapes and letters. The problem with the new-fangled machines is that they don't cut custom shapes and I wasn't sure if they would cut cork fabric. I just needed a custom steel rule die that I could use with my existing old-fashioned machines.

After a bit of online research, I found Richard of Ace Dies in San Francisco. Custom dies aren't cheap (this one was about $200), but I decided that my hands needed me to make the investment. I reproduced my scraggly paper template in Adobe Illustrator, emailed the file to Richard, and picked the finished die up two days later.

And voila! What used to take me about 10 minutes of cutting by hand, now takes less than 10 seconds. Perfect every time. When I went to pick up the custom die, I brought my Zip-E-Mate machine with me, to make sure the die would fit through it without any problems. Richard laughed when I showed him my "toy"--I think he's used to working with big industrial dies for heavy equipment, not little purple plastic machines with a crank handle.

Oh well, whatever does the trick! It was an investment worth every cent. Cheers!

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Flat Zip Pouches

You know you're pathetic when it's been so long since you blogged that you can't even remember the password. Over nine months, and I don't even have a baby to show for it. I'd promise to try to do better, but I don't want to eat my words.

My excuse is that I've been busy sewing! I've been working on orders for several wineries, and I'm so happy to be doing so. Back when I first started this blog and my little business, I never would have believed that I'd even have this small modicum of success. I'll knock on wood (and on cork) that it continues.

A couple of the wineries have ordered flat zip pouches from me. Pictured above are "plain", although they're anything but! I call them plain because there's no sewn-on embellishment--it's just the natural beauty of the cork.
These are flat zips with a leaf design. On my next post (which will hopefully be posted in less than 9 months), I want to share about how I cut these leaves out.
And these with a thick stripe of dark cork down the middle are my least favorite to make. The seams where the light and dark cork come together are bulky and create the most work. You'd think the leaf pattern would be more time consuming than the striped ones, but no, I can sew that leaf pattern on in under 3 minutes.
I've had a lot of practice and plenty of chances to time myself. Here are 80 flat zip pouches, boxed up and ready to go tomorrow, to Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga. Last week, I sent 48 of them out to Beaulieu Vineyard in Rutherford. If neither of those places are in your neck of the woods, they are also available in my Etsy shop!

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My Website Is Up!

Will wonders never cease? I finally got my website back up! I simplified it quite a bit, and instead of having my own shopping cart like before, I'm only going to list on Etsy. This is the first site I actually made all by myself. Well, I used a template, but I had to customize it with all my own graphics and colors. Pat, pat, pat. (I'm patting myself on the back.)

AND I even made myself a little favicon--the little graphic that appears at the top of the browser. Mine is a tiny brown purse. Pat, pat, pat.

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Mean Columbian Hacker

If you've looked at my Sheekoo site lately, you probably noticed that it isn't there. That's because it was hacked and taken over by a Columbian phishing scammer, trying to get private banking information from people in Columbia. They corrupted a bunch of my web files, and I need to figure out how to fix them.

Thankfully, they did not get any of my customers' personal information, and since I use Paypal for my checkout, I didn't have anyone's credit card information anyway--phew. I'm also grateful that they weren't scamming people in the US, since that's where my customers are.

But I'm not so grateful that there are such underhanded, good-for-nothing, bleepity-bleeping people out there that would do something like this. Have your mothers taught you nothing?!?

Anyway, my website was pretty out of date, so maybe this will help me re-envision what I want it to look like and how I want it to operate. So, I'm sorry for any inconvenience. If there's something in particular you saw previously or at a show, feel free to contact me!

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A Little Bib Crazy

I sometimes babysit a friend's 8-month old baby, so I got it in my head to make a few bibs for her. It was SUCH fun picking the cute baby fabrics that I got a LITTLE bit carried away.

I ended up making over 50 bibs. My family members asked me why I was making so many, to which I laughed maniacally and told them that I couldn't seem to stop myself. Is there a local chapter of Bib Makers Anonymous?

So what, so I have a few bibs to sell. Here's a set for little girls.

Or for little boys.

Or if you don't know the baby's gender, here's even a set that's gender neutral. I'm kinda partial to those robots, and of course, the little doggies.

I have them posted here in my Etsy store. They're made of super soft 100% cotton flannel and are lined with a layer of 100% cotton batting, for the utmost in absorption and coverage. The side velcro closure means they're easy to put on and take off--but make sure to close the velcro before putting them in the wash so other things don't get stuck on it.

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A Purse for Me Own Self

I liked the style of the purse I made for my friend Suzi so much that I decided to make one for myself. Even though I make purses all the time, it's actually quite rare for me to keep one.


Although I made it a month ago, right after I made Suzi's,I just haven't taken the time to post about it until now. Bad, bad, bad, bad.

Enough self-flagellation. I love the fabric of my new purse, the convenient adjustable strap, the fact that it closes completely with a zipper, and the crimson ultrasuede edging on the pocket. But having a cell phone pocket on the outside of the purse--THAT is my all-time favorite feature. Also a great place to stuff keys (or a few dog treats for Cabana).

Lots of pockets inside, too. I tried being lazy once and made a purse without interior pockets. After a few days, I ripped it apart so I could add pockets inside. I don't know how you can use a purse without pockets. Where would you stash your lip balm or mints or hygiene products?

Hey hey, if you like this purse, GOOD NEWS! I made TWO, so there's one for sale on my website!

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