Tote Bag Fetish

It seems I might have a bag problem, as in too many. After years of collecting them I have now turned my attention to making them, and what fun that has been!

I recently came across a poem by Brian Bilston about someone who has a lot of bags. Naturally I thought he must be writing about a weaver. Somehow I thought it was only we weavers/spinners/knitters who can never resist the opportunity for yet another tote bag (okay, maybe also quilters). I was just about to write a comment on his poem when I saw that someone had already posted this:” I think you’ve been in my house!” There was no indication that she is a weaver/spinner/knitter, so maybe the predilection for tote collecting goes farther afield.

If you’ve never read Brian Bilston’s poetry before, you can find his poetry at https://brianbilston.com/ here. Or you can look for his books.

Bags

you have bags
of bags

collecting bags
with nothing in them
except bags,
inside of which are other bags,
full of bags

you have enough bags for life
for a hundred lifetimes–
if there was a prize for the total number of tote bags
you would totes have it
in the bag

don’t know why you need so many bags
when all you ever put in them
are other bags
— Brian Bilston

A couple of years ago, after I took a sakiori class with Janny Simpson, I continued to weave off my fabric. I used it as supplemental fabric on a denim ground to make a tote bag. I am smitten with it still, in spite of its lack of sewing skills.

I’ve bought plenty of tote bags over the years from places I love, like the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, a festival in Horta in the Açores, totebags from every weaving conference I’ve ever attended….the list goes on and on. Here’s the tote I bought in Nijar, Spain, in April after wishing I had bought it the year before, when I first saw it. I had to buy two so I could share the wonder with a friend.

Over the summer I used this tote bag from Spain to make another attempt at sewing one myself, with fabric I got in Sardinia in May. Do you remember how I asked a restaurant and vineyard owner to sell me this table runner right off one of the tables in his restaurant?

My sewing construction for this bag was much better. It helps to have a good tote bag as an example, along with help from my sewing friend Emily, and all the YouTube videos available. In these digital times there is always a solution to finding information. I love carrying this bag. Now that I’m back in Bosa (Sardinia) I have bought more of this fabric to share with friends. And of course I stopped by the restaurant to show the owner how I used his table runner.

And since I love to see what other weavers make wherever I travel, I was thrilled to find women here in Bosa who also sew with these fabrics, I’ve bought three more bags, but only two of them are mine! I just got the two that are shown together hanging on a door knob recently. All of these were made by a local woman, Paola Porcu, who sews lots of interesting items out of these traditional fabrics. The two I bought are lined with handwoven fabric that looks like Swedish canvas lace (that I just finished weaving myself in 40/2 linen as shawls!). That fabric was woven by Paola’s mother. What a treasure! How could I resist, and how could I just choose one of these stunning bags. They are HUGE, as you can tell in the top photo. I plan to showcase lots of yarns in these bags, and showcase the bags themselves by having them out for viewing near my favorite chair for knitting.

Before we headed home last June we stopped in Alghero, a little further up the western coast of Sardinia from Bosa. I found this man’s weaving studio, where he also makes tote bags, among other things.

Not all sewing projects turn out well on the first attempt. This tote bag is waiting at home for my return when I will try to figure out what on earth went wrong!! It’s made with fabric I love–made on a day spent with my good friend Jody who does wonderful work with botanical print dyeing. She guided me through this attempt, and I have a lovely raw silk scarf now. But I’m actually more intrigued with the cotton flannel fabric we used for an iron blanket on our scarves. I decided to use the cotton flannel botanical print for a hand bag. The sewing went well, using the pattern “Mini Poppins” by Aunties Two, but when I finished the bag by inserting metal stays to shape the bag something went terribly wrong. I hope I can fix whatever is wrong. It would be a wonderful bag to carry in fall and winter.

Tote bags are SO useful, and also beautiful. They hold memories of events attended, travels, and the gathering of so many rich experiences. The materials for making them provide a grounding time of creating and sewing the bag. How can I possibly resist them? Yet the poet Brian Bilson is also correct that many of my tote bags hang on hooks and are filled to the brim with other tote bags.