Recently Handcrafted Bags
It’s a sunny day here at home in McHenry, IL where I live and work on Bird Trouble. I can’t believe it’s been MONTHS since I’ve updated the blog with photos of my recent work. I’ve been updating social media (our Instagram and Facebook) but I’ll try to get back on here too. For the last 16 days, I’ve been working non stop on shipping orders placed while we were out of workshop, completing a handful of design your own orders, photographing and launching a ready to ship drop, making a wholesale order for a new local woman owned small business stockist, communicating with my manufacturing partners in Ohio on new production strategies.
I’ll share a little more about the production strategies because it’s important to me to remain transparent. Ya’ll appreciate that too! I’m excited to finally see these ideas come to life, I’ve had them in my brain for a long time. I’m a long-term thinker and planner. We’ve figured out how to cut Bird Trouble patterns and fringe easier and faster with a PERFECT quality outcome. As a artisan, I can tell you that hand cutting leather with literal rotary blades, exacto knifes, scissors is physically labor intensive and hard work. Picture it, your shoulder is extending and your all of your arm muscles are pushing the blade down while your back is hunched over the table in a million directions. And you do that pretty much daily before you sit on a sewing machine to sew hunched over for a few hours. I guess after doing it for over a decade and proving myself to myself (lol) as an artisan and small business owner, it’s time to work smarter at this part. Humans are still involved with the entire process of course, but I’d like to out-source 95% of my cutting. I’ll save the physical labor to growing my business, sewing, and every other tiny facet of our process. My main goal hasn’t changed. We’re focusing on staying sustainably small batched, never not being handmade in the Midwest USA, and getting Bird Trouble into your hands!
Summer is coming to end in northern IL. Luckily I finished August open Design Your Own orders and I can take some time to be outside today. I’m moving slow, watering my house plants, listening to the birds on the patio, hanging out with 4 dogs (I have 2 and am taking care of my family’s 2 for a few), typing out this blog post and finding space to meditate. I hope you’re enjoying your end of summer! XX, Alexz
