Getting Lighter and Lighter

Lightening up as the weather grows warmer means lighter clothes, lighter shoes, and certainly lighter bags.  Shortly after I can't stand the thought of socks, I can't stand the thought of lugging a heavy bag either!  Piece Work has a solution:  this summer, instead of carrying everything with you all of the time, do spring cleaning of your bag, and transfer the essential items to one of our small shoulder bags.  And then, to make things even lighter, transfer the most essential of the essential to one of our Ultra Slims.  This way, when you leave the house, you can put the Ultra-Slim with your driver's license, a couple of credit cards, and a few bills plus your gym card inside your small bag (which might also be holding your phone, keys, and a pen a stick of gum).  Then when you get to the gym or the park where you plan to take a walk, slip just the Ultra Slim in your pocket and hide the bag with your other things in your car.


To encourage you to try our Light Combo, if you order a Small Shoulder Bag and an Ultra Slim, we'll slip a $3 refund into the pocket of the Ultra Slim, put the Ultra Slim inside the Small Bag, and ship the two to you in one light package.  This offer is  good for spring cleaning time only, March 20 - June 21.

Fonts!

Since making our abstract black/white/gray small shoulder bags for Laura in Brooklyn, we've been on a kick of making abstract mostly-black wallets.  We love the way the most prosaic and uninteresting copy ("Tarter Control for Senior Dogs" or "Salt and Black Pepper"), when cut into unreadable pieces turns into great abstract design motifs.  A sort of zooming in on the fontness of the text.

The three wallets here are all currently available, but we predict they won't be around for long!  You can order them on any wallet page, but specify "black" as the color and write us a note on the Paypal page or an email to our gmail account saying your first, second, and third choices among the three.  We are also happy to custom design an abstract wallet (or any wallet) for you if you email us describing what you want.  Some people even mail us bags that they want us to use.  If you want to do that, email us, and we'll send you our shipping address.  We hope you love the fonts as much as we do!

Old Coin Purses

This past weekend we were poking around in our favorite antique/junk place lookng for old buttons, when we came across a framed collection of old coin purses.  Down on the floor in a dark corner, I spied a large frame, about 2 inches thick, in which a dozen little purses and bags were pressed between the glass and an ancient sheet of foam rubber.  The coin purses ranged from a very fancy silky bag with embroidery on it to a rough little sack that looked like it would have been used to carry marbles to--my favorite-- a premium coin purse from the First Farmers' Bank.  Some of the purses were no more than 1 1/2 inches wide and high;  several had very clever triple clasps so that the purse could snap open on two sides.  I didn't have enough money to buy the collection, but I did have my sketchbook.  Pictured here are a few of the purses.  I plan on going back this weekend and drawing the rest!

Three Little Black Bags Go to the City!

Well, two of them are black, but the third one is just as sophisticated because it's made out of an Urban Outfitter's shopping bag and has a genuine dogtag chain for a strap!  The black bags are made from an onion bag (on the left) and a Kettle bag (on the right).  We designed these for Laura Oltman, who lives in Brooklyn, and manages a small clothing shop in Park Slope.  She wanted a small shoulder bag, in black with abstract designs, to wear with summer dresses.

Even though we're currently deep in the frozen belly of winter, it's nice to think of Laura walking down 7th Avenue wearing her black bag with a breezy summery dress.  We love these bags so much, and we think it's amazing how sophisticated and big city our humble materials look!  You can order your own on the Small Shoulder Bags page.  Specify black and either Kettle or onion bag material.  (Black onion bags are getting extremely rare, but we'll do our best.)

Exciting New/Used Materials!

To the left is our standard wallet made of a new silky smooth but very strong Asian pear (or apple, banana, or pineapple or mango!) material from a bag of dried fruit chips from a grocery store in Asheville.  The colors and design are spectacularly beautiful. 

Below the pear wallet is one made from a Kettle's new Tias corn chips bag-- great intensity of color with the strong blue shown here as well as a fine burnt orange.


You can order these wallets in the Kettle and King Arthur section, which we are going to rename Food Bags (as distinguished from Feed Bags) since we're carrying additional kinds of food packaging material now.

We have friends in Michigan and New Hampshire as well as Asheville who have been sending us some lovely horse feed bags.  If you're a horse-lover, this is a great fun wallet to carry.  You can order horse wallets from the Feed Bags catalog page.  We have lilac, light green, and pink as the dominant bag colors in addition to the colors shown here.

Coffee bags smell wonderful in addition to being strong, colorful, and graphically interesting.  We made these two checkbook covers for some friends out of their favorite coffee bags.  We had never done so much piecing of material before, but the small size of the bags made it necessary, and we love the quilted effect that resulted.  So we're adding coffee bag material to our checkbook, standard, Shara, grab 'n' go, and ultra slim wallet possibilities. 

Coffee bag material is a heavy film in most cases.  If you have a favorite bag, send us a few and we'll make up whatever you want out of it.  If you only have one, we can still do the job but will have to piece it out with material we have on hand.  if you want it made from your coffee bags only, send us at least three bags.
 
Our final new material this time is a gorgeous new bird seed bag from an Asheville friend.  We've used it here to make our new BIG wallet, called the Shara after the friend who asked us to design it based on a large leather wallet that she had.  The Shara has ten credit card slots inside, two billfold cases, a coin purse, and a small notebook.  You can order your own Shara on the NEW Big Wallets catalog page.  (This is the same wallet we featured a few posts back, so scroll back until you come to the painted version, which also shows the inside.)

Wallets as Piggy Banks-- the Hardest Working Wallets of All!

During the month that Piece Work's studio has been closed for the holidays, I've been traveling around the northeast visiting family.  As usual, I was curious about the state of any wallets we had planted there.  Last spring when I was in New Hampshire, two of my little grandsons had wanted me to make wallets for them.  This was nine months ago, and theirs is a very active and relaxed household, so I was stunned to learn that they still had both wallets in their possession, and that, amazingly, both kids knew exactly where they were!

These wallets were definitely cases of field surgery, so I was really surprised to see that they looked about the same after nine months of very hard use.  I had had no sewing machine or patterns or anything else I usually use to make a wallet.  The kids had wanted Kettle wallets just like one I was carrying at the time.  So we went to the co-op and bought two bags of blue-flavored Kettle chips.  I approximated a pattern and used dental floss to sew the wallets.  The boys both wanted small notebooks but no coin purses or credit card cases.

You can imagine my surprise the other day when six-year-old Luca showed me his wallet, which had no closing elastic or button (his choice) but was somehow managing to carry about ten dollars in coins (I think gravity was holding it together) and a gift card for a bookstore.  Then eight-year-old Tallis brought his wallet in.  He had asked for a button and tie, which we had made out of some yarn, and his wallet still looked pristine and new.  Inside he had his life savings-- $25 in one-dollar bills.  He also had a gift card tucked away.  When we went to Borders' to cash in the gift cards, the boys lugged their wallets and pulled them out to pay, augmenting the gift cards with cash from their wallet-banks.

Holiday Traveling! (and holiday gifts)

If you're standing in the security line at JFK with a two-year-old clinging to your leg and both hands clutching carry-on bags, you don't need the added fun of having to search for your passport and boarding pass while your phone's ringing from somewhere deep within one of your bags.  Piece Work's small bag lets you keep your passport, boarding pass, smart (or not-so-smart) phone, and a few sticks of gum within easy reach with no frantic searching needed.  And when you're trying to come up with last minute gift ideas, think first of Piece Work wallets and other things-- easy to pack, easy to ship, and everybody enjoys having a new wallet to play with!