A Fantastic Handbag Designer Eileen Roche (Embroidery is her Bag)

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Just a Couple of Bag Ladies

November 2, 2011
By Eileen Roche

I’m afraid to count. I feel like Imelda Marcos but instead of shoes, it’s bags. Handbags. In the past five months, I’ve made over 20 handbags. Wow – it would be embarrassing if it wasn’t necessary. Every time I made a bag, I learned something very valuable that I applied to the next bag. Eventually, I got the hang of it.

But I wasn’t the only one. My good friend, Nancy Zieman, also made bags (I’ll bet she’s up to 20+ too!) just for this project, Designer Handbags. We decided to tackle this subject together because she has a line of handbag templates with Clover and I developed a ‘functional embroidery’ technique that not only looks good but works too. It sounded like the perfect marriage. And it was – we had a blast and hope you will too.

In Designer Handbags, you’ll find a 30-minute video illustrating all of the steps – embroidery, stabilizer, foundation, hardware, pressing – everything you need to make your own Designer Handbag.

***(Adding my 2 cents) I find that along with her beautiful bags she is also a master embroidery artist. Here is a link to some free embroidery patterns she offers to anyone that would like them. http://www.dzgns.com/products/115////

Two Amazing Handbag Designers – Eileen Roche and Nancy Zieman

Eileen Roche and Nancy Zieman

I just finished watching an episode of “Sewing with Nancy” and she had a guest named Eileen Roche. She and Nancy have teamed up to make the most gorgeous hand-sewn handbags while adding machine embroidery to give it a real designer look. I was really impressed with the final look of the bags compared to many, many handmade bags I’ve seen over the years. I think the extra few minutes it took to add the embroidery to the bag made a huge difference to me, if I were a buyer.  As a clothing and accessory designer/artist myself, this got me excited! What a difference that detail makes! Plus, the machine does all the work. This is definitely making me scratch my head, considering the purchase of an embroidery machine. Hmmmmm.

Now to all you talented hand-embroidery artists, what a gorgeous bag you could make! I would love for my embroidering friends to post some pictures of some of your artwork, simple or complicated. I’d love to see if any of you have embroidered on handbags.

Here’s a link to a demo video of Eileen and Nancy:

http://youtu.be/YYAXnp19DR0

And here is a link to Eileen Roche’s Blog:

http://dzgns.com/blog/2011/11/just-a-couple-of-bag-ladies/

I love the over-the-top Mexican embroidered bags, but the extremely tasteful embroidery on the above handbags are a perfect touch to the already stunning bags.

Mexican embroidered Bag