Sample Bags

As I was visiting Boersma’s Sewing Center in downtown McMinnville, OR recently, several of the staff noticed and appreciated the backpack I was carrying (my faux leather square purse size model), and called their manager over to speak with me. She wants to improve their bag making supplies department and asked me if I would […]

Expanding My Skillset

Recently, I saw a pattern from a simple “baguette” bag that I liked, but I didn’t really see why I should pay $10 for a pattern when it seems so easy to make. So I decided to try my hand at designing my own version. I wanted the bag to be about 10 1/2″ long […]

New Year, New Projects

If you’re one of my three followers, you may notice I updated the website to make it a little easier to navigate. My bag projects continue to pile up, and it’s been getting difficult to scroll through everything on one page, like I had it set up. Now I have a separate page for each […]

Recycling

It’s time to do something about my first prototypes. I have several tote bags that I made very early in my Too Many Totes journey that I created simply for the educational value of making them. Some I love and use, but others just sit in the closet mocking me. When I recently had to […]

Upping My Game

I recently attended a webinar hosted by Ellie Lum of Klum House. She’s a Portland bag maker who I’ve followed for a couple of years after I made one of her patterns as my first tote bag in my new journey (see the Freemont bag). The webinar was titled “From Bag Maker to Designer Challenge” […]

Next Steps

I’ve been thinking lately about the next steps in my sewing journey. I feel like it’s time to step up my game a bit. If you saw my last post, you know I’ve been making prototypes of a lot of different bags and not bags, with the sole purpose of learning and discovering. As I […]

Everything is a Prototype

Everything I make is a prototype. I love figuring out new patterns, and so far I’m new enough to bag making that I rarely make the same one twice. And on those rare occasions, such as the ukulele case, I made modifications to the sewing method based on what I discovered during the initial build […]

Terminology

What do you call someone who sews? On the web-o-sphere, I mostly see the term “sewists”, I guess because “sewer” looks like waste water storage instead of a crafter. We used to be called “seamstresses”, but that sounds like a woman who makes garments – it’s more restrictive than what we need. Of course “quilter” […]

Hello Tote Lovers!

Welcome to TooManyTotes.com. This site was born from a discussion my husband and I had recently, where he wondered aloud if maybe I had enough totes, and I should think about getting rid of some before I made any more. I politely declined, because as we all know, and he has now learned, you can […]