Sewing, sewing and more sewing!

My first passion is writing, hands down! I've been writing since I was a kid and have never stopped. I've had thirteen books published and four more to be published this year and I never see myself stopping.

When I'm writing, I feel like everything is right with the world. I write because it's what makes me happiest in life. It's pure joy wrapped in a journal or laptop!

That being said, coming in second for my life passions is sewing. I've also been doing this since I was a kid. I love it almost as much as I love writing! Almost :-)

Like my writing, my sewing has evolved over the years. I used to sew only clothes: for myself, for my friends, for my dolls lol!

But I started making bags a little over twenty years ago. I transformed my artwork into the bags themselves. I used to only paint North West Indian artwork. So, I took some of my artwork, printed it on fabric, then sewed it on a simple tote I made.

From there, I moved on to actually cutting out each piece of the artwork in vinyl then sewing that on more sophisticated bags (sophisticated meaning it had lots of compartments and pockets lol!)

Once I got the hang of making solid bags, I let my imagination go wild and that began my years long journey of making bags for friends, family and myself that captured every movie, TV show or book that I ever loved! Here are just a handful of examples:

I kept going, coming up with more and more elaborate ideas. I wasn't sure if I could make them, but I kept trying and surprised myself when most of my patterns actually worked! I knew all that math would finally come into play in my life!

And that's what brought me to today. I still make clothes (I even make some really fun cosplay!), and I still make bags, but the bags have taken on lives of their own.

It all started with an idea of making the Serenity (the spaceship from the TV show Firefly) into a bag. My friend Faith and I were going to cosplay Captain Mal for Comic Con and I thought we needed some cute bags to carry all our stuff in. So what better item to put all our things in, but the Serenity herself!

A lot of trial and error (and a few cuss words) later, I had created two Serenity bags.

Then seeing the shape of the Serenity I realized that they almost resembled dragons. I couldn't get the thought out of my head. What if I just altered the pattern, just a little... And voila! The first dragon bag was born and I've been obsessively making them ever since.

After that, making magical creature bags has been a wonderful way for me to create and get my imagination going. Sometimes, I need to work out what's happening in my stories and sewing gives my mind the space and ability to think things through.

I already have plans for a new bag that I'm really excited about. For those of you that have read or watched the new show based on the comic books, The Runaways, you can probably figure it out :-) I'm working on the pattern now and I'm crossing my fingers it works!

Bottom line is: I'll always write and I'll always sew. The act of creating something new is just about the most amazing thing there is and I'm just grateful I'm able to do it!