An artist is like an athlete… An athlete does not dive into a sport without some sort of warm up. I am the same way. When I haven’t been working in the studio for a while, I do a warm up project before diving into new work.

So, after taking time off during the holidays to be with my family, I returned to Studio 109A earlier this month, dusted off my tools, and started working on my warm up project, a Carpet Bag.

When I think of Carpet bags, I think of Mary Poppins  pulling her umbrella, a lamp, and even a hat rack out of her magical, red bag of tricks. I always wanted a bag like that, so I decided to make one.

When I visited Mary Jo’s Cloth Store last fall, I purchased a cordurroy fabric with that Mary Poppins  image in mind. I used some of the fabric on the Sew 70’s Project Runway Studio 109A purse but saved the rest. The end result is my version of the carpet bag, which like Mary Poppins’ bag did for Jane and Michael, opened up my imagination to all sorts of possiblities.

With Project Runway Studio 109A behind me, it is  now time to look to the future and design my first collection, Arm Candy, which will be on exhibition at Artspace in May. I will continue blogging weekly as I did during Project Runway Studio 109A to document my progress and look forward to sharing my new work with you.