Emily Keaton: Never Enough Bags
Emily Keaton has a degree in mathematics, but three years ago this Massachusetts wife, mother and freelance writer started making handbags professionally, trading under the name “Sew Sweet Bags.”
Emily started making bags because, she says, “I can never have enough bags! I started out making totes for myself because I never seemed to have enough on hand. I’d make a bag and use it for something, and pretty soon it became dedicated to a specific purpose (like a meeting bag, or library bag, or church bag, or travel bag, etc.). Then the next time I needed a bag for something, they were all already being used for something, so I’d have to make a new one! Then I realized what great gifts bags are, so I started making bags to give to family and friends. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I could adapt what I’d been doing with making totes to make purses for myself.
“After I’d been making bags for myself, family and friends for a long time and had started making purses for myself, I decided that, since bags are pretty marketable (fun as well as functional!), they would be the perfect handcrafted item to try selling just to see if I could! The decision also came at a point in my life when I needed a new challenge and a creative outlet –a handbag business definitely fits the bill on both counts.”
Most of Emily’s designs for bags come from her experiences, from looking around at fabric and trims and from suggestions made from customers. Her most unique creation was a shaggy patchwork quilt shoulder bag she made for her mom using patches from an old chenille bedspread she’d had when growing up.
Emily’s handbag company, Sew Sweet Bags, “offers a delightful collection of handcrafted boutique-style fabric bags including shoulder bags, handbags, totes, baby bags, drawstring backpacks, bags for kids, wristlets, and accessories such as coin purses, glasses cases, and zippered pouches, in wide variety of bright and whimsical prints, classic toiles, and colorful home decorating fabrics.”
Emily brings the unique combination of both strengths in planning and mathematics as well as a good eye for color and fabric combinations to her handbag designs, “I’m good at planning and I have a degree in math, so one of my strengths is planning out my raw material use to minimize waste. I know exactly how many bags of a particular type I can get out of a certain sized piece of fabric, and I design my own bag patterns to best utilize standard fabric widths. Although I have absolutely no training in this, I’ve been told that I have a good eye for color and combining different fabric prints and designs. I don’t know if this is true or not (I just choose fabrics that speak to me and combine things that I think look pretty together!), but people seem to like, and buy, what I make. My customers also comment on the use of trims on some of my bags. While by no means entirely unique, trims do not seem to be widely used. ”
Emily advises any aspiring handbag designers to be persistent. “Starting a handbag business (or any creative business) is a big job,” she says. “It can be kind of overwhelming, especially building up a decent-sized inventory of your products to sell at the beginning. Don’t get discouraged! And don’t let initial poor results disappoint you. I cried after my first craft show because I’d worked so hard to make a large selection of bags to sell and ended up selling only a few that day. It was very disappointing! But rather than letting that experience defeat me, it motivated me to work harder at finding other arenas for selling my bags and making more contacts.”
Anyone interested in buying one of Emily’s bags should start with her website at sewsweetbags.com, which offers a main-order form and lists where she will be selling at various juried fairs.
