Dr. Debbie’s twins enjoying the twin bags I made for them.

I made another one of these shoulder bags for my sister-in-law, Kim. It was a bit hard to take a picture in the mirror of myself wearing it but you get the idea. Maybe she can send me a picture of her wearing it. She is a lot better looking than I am.

Judy was the high bidder for the bag. Any money from such sales will be donated to the Foundation at my hospital. Thanks to all who participated!

As I have said before, most of the straps come with the ends sewn back on themselves. If you have been looking at my bags at all you will have noticed that I  have used these tabs as style elements. Here is a new idea I came up with to do just that. These pictures show two bags, fronts and backs.

I have been approached by many people I do not know looking to buy one of my bags. I have never sold a single one of the hundreds I have made. I have just given them to friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances. In order to let everyone have a shot at getting a bag, I have decided to try putting one up on Ebay. I have placed a minimum that will cover the shipping so I have no intentions of making money on this. It is just a way to let anyone in the country have a shot at one. Let’s see how it goes.

Click on this link to see the Ebay offering:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0&_nkw=Badtadmd&_sacat=0&_from=R40

I asked Anya to share a picture of herself with the bag I made her for winning last month’s contest. Here she is as well as pictures of the bag.

Not everything you can do with repurposed material needs to be fancy or daring. I had a pant hanger made of metal. My pants kept slipping off of it. After I figured out how to get a trauma strap cover to stay on it, the pants now stay in place.

When I make a bag, I start by cutting out a bottom the size and shape of the bag I have in mind. I long ago recognized that sewing the double thickness bottoms one at a time was very inefficient. If I have a sheet of the material sewn up ahead of time, it helps me get started a lot faster on a new bag.

I have also been frustrated with three big bins of straps of various sizes that needed organizing to be more useful.

To address both of these issues, I spent several hours over the weekend organizing and sewing straps into big sheets for bag bottoms, both yellow and orange. Here are the sheets I came up with so I am now ready to take off making more bags when I have time and inclination.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to my first annual Get a Bag Contest  I announced last month. A lot of people sent in many wonderful ideas. Some of them like sexy night wear and prom dresses will probably stay on the drawing board indefinitely but some of the others have my mind going already!

Anya is the winner of the contest. She sent in a lot of great ideas and here is what I made with one of them. It is a belt case that will hold both my Leatherman and my trauma shears, which I usually hang from a retractable key ring on my belt. As I have mentioned before, sewing little things is pretty tricky and I had to go through several tries before I got it right. Big problem: no room for one of my BadTadMD patches!

I had a little extra time this week (my computer was in the shop) so I was able to come up with these. I am about at the end of my blue straps so watch for new color combinations.