This topic contains 29 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by 
Kathy Kennedy 7 years, 2 months ago.
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Greetings Morbaggers!
We’re a newly active pod in the USA and have been invited to share a booth at our local Redmond (Washington) Derby Days Festival. My question is this: what is the best way to display the bags? We’ll be under a canopy. I’m thinking clothes pins on a bungee cord or clothesline, but would love some other ideas!
Thanks,
Jan
Chickadeez (and friends)Hi Jan! I see Chickadeez (and friends) on the list of pods making morsbags each month. I always wonder about pods I don’t know – how are you getting on, where you give bags away, and so on, so I’m delighted to hear from you!
Clothes line display was my first thought, like yours, but you need two firm supports to tie the ends to. If it rains and the supports are holding up the canopy the bags may get wet.
(If you’re displaying bags that you don’t want to give away, “specials” for instance, thread the clothes line through the handles. We have a set of display bags that spell out “morsbags.com” and often get asked for the one with a particular letter on – for someone’s initial, for example.
If the line goes through the handles a well-meaning helper can’t give one of the vital bags away, and no-one can help themselves.)Bags on lines tend to flop and fold themselves – slip a bit of card inside if you want them to stay flat, take it out when giving the bag away and pop it in the next bag to be hung up.
I think it was Pol who made this display out of a large net – was it a curtain once? I think you attach the bags with big paper clips, or clothes pins would work too.
Rosie of Offcuts pod has a free-standing indoor clothes airer and I was going to post a link, but can’t find that particular type on sale now. This is a bit like it, but I’m sure anything of the sort would do, you’d just need to keep restocking it!
http://www.argos.co.uk/product/8505239
Later on I found a photo of it – left hand side of this photo –
If you have plenty of helpers nothing beats threading lots of bags on a person’s arms to display them. They can talk to the “customer” while he or she chooses their bag and it’s not hard to slide the bags to left or right over your linked hands to reach the bag they want.
I play a game of guessing which bag they’ll choose – nearly always a woman will pick something that matches what she’s wearing at the time and most men wonder what their wife / partner/ mum would like!I made this tablecloth with curtain hooks sewn on it. I arrange the cloth so that the hooks are on the edge of the table and hang bags on them.
It’s OK-ish – works if the customers are a little way away but not good if there are a lot of people as only the front few are aware of the bags and they’re usually right up against the table if it’s crowded, so can’t see them anyway. It has the advantage that you can restock from behind the table if getting out is a problem – maybe the neighbouring table is very close and it’s a squeeze getting out front.If all else fails, draped or folded bags can be laid on a table, simple!
Macs bags have a good combination here – lines and table.
They also have colourful information for people to read.You’ll probably come across the phenomenon of “reverse guerilla-ing”. This is where someone helps themselves to bags on display, or bags that you were not intending to hand out yet. Maybe you hung a few bags outside the venue as an advertisement – when you go to get them back they’re gone. Well you were going to give them away anyway…. Always makes us laugh
Dear Beattie,
Thanks for the support and all the creative ideas and photos!
Yes, we are just getting rolling, but I will be updating our bag count once they all are tallied in the next few days.
I totally forgot that we have one of those folding indoor clothes drying racks – so I am going to try to work with that. Love your idea of the curtain hooks on the tablecloth too. Our weather has been and is supposed to be lovely and sunny for the festival on Saturday, so won’t need to worry about rain.
I wish I had more volunteers so we could just hand out from the arm, but alas, it might just be two of us this time. We also have to host an activity for the kids, so someone will be manning that portion.
Again I appreciate all your suggestions – wish us luck!
Cheers,
JanLucky you with predictable weather! It sounds like you’ll have a ball on Saturday Jan, I hope you’ll let us know how you get on. If you already have a laundry airer that will be a big help, you’ll be able to stock it up. If you have loads of bags and want them to go fast put lots on it, if you need to spin them out as stocks are a bit low just put on a few at a time.
Good luck with running another activity at the same time – that’s going to be challenging. It might be a good idea to arrange a display about morsbags and what you’re doing for people to get more information if you’ll be pushed for time – then you can invite anyone who wants to know more to have a read. Maybe have slips of paper or cards ready with your contact details for people who want to give you material or get involved in making bags themselves.
Is there somewhere local to you that you could arrange to use as a drop-off point for people who want to donate fabric? We have a deal with a local fruit & veg shop which will take in donations for us and give me a ring and I sometimes give them bags for their customers.
I’m sure you’ll have an exciting day! 😀
Wow – I really appreciate all these tips – obviously you are the voice of experience.
I’m looking forward to this and will let you know how it goes!Beattie,
Again, I really appreciated all your comments – our display was so successful. We were setting up at 9:00 – by 11:00 we were completely cleaned out of the 60 bags we had! I would like to post photos, but I need to figure out the Flickr app – never really used it before.Hi Jan, I am in Offcuts pod in Leicester, UK (Richard !!! found buried in a carpark shot us to fame!) I am so pleased your event went well. I hope you manage to post your photos on Flickr. We often say to people as we give them bags ‘We are always looking for people to help us make morsbags’ We have found quite a few morsbaggers that way.
Some of the pods have Facebook pages including Bude Baggers which built up almost entirely using Facebook. If you search morsbags on there they all should come up.
Hi Jan! Congratulations! I’m so pleased your fair display went very well! Exciting, isn’t it! I do hope you are able to show us some photos.
Thanks for your suggestions Offcuts 😀
Yes, good suggestions from Offcuts – thanks.
Hi,
I’m part of the Harborough HIT Bags Morsbag pod – we regularly attend events and post photos to our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/HarboroughHITBags/
If you’re a Facebook user, please pop along and give us a like. We’re trialing posting some hints and tips for Morsbag making, and we regularly post updates on bags we’ve made and events we’re attending etc.
Thanks,
Em
Thanks Em, I’m now a follower! 😊
Jan, I think you need to go back to flickr.com and make your photos public. When I clicked on the link I got –
“Jan Shea hasn’t made any photos public yet.”
AnonymousThis is such fantastic information and exactly what I needed: We’re going to have another Morsbags workshop and I wanted to display unusual Morsbags. For example one made out of a gent’s shirt, one that was an embroidered tablecloth, one a former pillowcase, etc. Now I know how to display them.
I have a special workshop display for the different “stages” of a morsbag: It’s a blanket and I pinned 8 small morsbags in their metamorphosis from the kit the participants are given (i.e. a long piece of material, tops folded down and handles already pinned inside) to the finished product. Especially school teachers were impressed with it!
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