Morsbags at The Handmade Fair, Bowood House

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This topic contains 6 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by beattie beattie 5 years, 9 months ago.

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  • #9464
    beattie
    beattie
    Keymaster

    Him’n’me are making the final preparations for our morsbags-making experience at the Handmade Fair at Bowood House in Wiltshire on Saturday and Sunday.

    * Hundreds of kits cut out and ironed
    * Bunting and display material ready to hang
    * All the beautiful Janome sewing machines cleaned and bobbined up
    * Lots of bags made to give to people who can’t stay and sew with us.

    All we need now is for this flippin’ cold that’s grogging me up to go away! GRRRR!

    #9473
    butterfly bags
    butterfly bags
    Participant

    Hope you have a fabulous weekend. I loved the Ragley Hall event.
    I hope to see lots of photos afterwards.
    Xx

    #9474
    beattie
    beattie
    Keymaster

    I’m just working on the photos Tori, gotta remember my flickr.com password….

    #9475
    beattie
    beattie
    Keymaster

    On Friday afternoon we drove to the lovely estate of Bowood House, somewhat appalled by the queues and traffic jams around Trowbridge on the way. Having got through them, things improved and we arrived just before the first day of the show closed. After the previous users of our lovely little marquee had packed up we spent an hour or so getting settled in. I draped bunting, made up an information panel and hung up our trusty M-O-R-S-bags, while Himself sorted out the electrical arrangements and other technicalities.

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    Saturday dawned bright and fair, we rose unusually early (for us..) and returned to the Handmade Fair in much better traffic, to finish getting things ready.

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    After that, things got a bit lively!

    We had a lovely surprise about mid-morning – who should turn up but Wendy and Mike of Macs Bags! We were very pleased to see them, and they generously came back a bit later and gave us a quick lunch break each. Well that was a delightful treat, as I was expecting to have to last all day on a small pack of crackers.

    The only other photos I took are from the last couple of needle-persons as we were too busy to snap any before that.

    Bronwen is thinking about starting a pod – we enjoyed our chat

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    and I forgot to ask this lady’s name, but she was thrilled with the bag she made as it happened to be an exact match for her aged granny’s sofa covers and brought back fond memories. What a lovely connection.

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    #9479
    beattie
    beattie
    Keymaster

    I forgot to tell you – we made 65 bags on five sewing machines on Saturday! That was working very hard, with a queue almost the whole day.

    Today (Sunday) we made 47 bags on four machines as Minke had to retire “injured”, but Frank hopes to sort him out before we hand them on.

    This is the first pulse of customers arriving at 9.30 – look at the beautiful blue sky. It lasted all day.

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    Early on we had a nice surprise – a lady arrived with a morsbag already in her handbag. She’d been given it by a friend in Bristol who’d been bagged a little while ago and had asked for one for a friend – her!

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    The interesting things about this bag are that
    1) It came with a leaflet that said it had been made by Offcuts pod
    and
    2) It doesn’t have a sewn-on label, the same info and logo has been stamped onto a plain part of the bag. Looks great, hope it’s washable.

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    Just round the corner from us today they were holding free pompom making workshops – our customers started arriving wearing pompom crowns or tiaras. 😀 They didn’t have to queue, participants who couldn’t fit in the tent just sat outside in the sunshine, winding away, lovely!

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    I’d like to thank the team at The Handmade Fair who made it possible for us to participate this weekend. We had a wonderful and productive weekend. And I’d also like to thank the two Austrian ladies, mother and daughter, who came and watched, then returned and made their bags. They came to see us as they were leaving and we were packing up, to say that they enjoyed their time sewing with us the best of the whole day. Now that’s the sort of thing that keeps us going 🙂 Thank you for saying thank you!

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by beattie beattie.
    #9481
    butterfly bags
    butterfly bags
    Participant

    Wow. That’s an impressive total. You must have had some very speedy sewers!! The ladies at the fabric guild have been trying out the new stamp so that’s a pretty new bag. They were running low of labels so are trying out the stamp whilst they arrange new labels.
    Looks like you had a fabulous event, hope you enjoyed it.

    #9482
    beattie
    beattie
    Keymaster

    Thank you Tori! We had the usual mix of speedy sewers and absolute novices, plus all abilities and experience in between. Altogether a super weekend 🙂

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