Introducing Handcrafted at Wit's End

You may ask, "What exactly is Handcrafted at Wit's End?" This is how Ginneymae answered that question on her website.


"Literally? All kinds of things. It's sort of a play on words, since I refer to my home place as Wit's End Farm and I like to, uh, handcraft stuff. My main focus is totes and purses upcycled from vintage feed, seed, sugar, flour and coffee sacks.
This is nothing new, really, as resourceful mamas were doing it many, many years before I picked up my first needle and thread. They did it out of necessity - trying to reuse/repurpose something for their household or family, often making curtains, dishtowels and clothing from empty sacks. After a while the mills got wise and started making their feed sacks fancier, with all-over prints rather than just the name of the mill and the contents. I suspect there were quite a few little girls running around with "Layer Mash" bloomers! Since my own daughters would have nothing to do with that notion, I started making purses when my feed sack collection outgrew the space I had to display them. That purse evolved into the carpetbagger version that I sell the most of today. The original kraft paper pattern has since been remade on a stencil blank so it will hold up better and because I let the sacks tell me what they want to be, I will occasionally tweak the existing patterns to come up with new and different purses. Otherwise, they get made into pillows if the design or graphics are too big or too spectacular to cram into purse form!"

If you have not visited her website yet you really should, it is an enjoyable read. Then be sure to pop on over to her Etsy shop and take a look around.

And I leave you with a little more directly from her website:

"I have gotten some great exposure in Small Town Living (a pdf file) and at Napa Farmhouse 1885. Oh, and MaryJane Butters of www.maryjanesfarm.com bought one of my carpetbaggers herself and she LOVES it! Woot!

The big news is that one of my carpetbaggers will be featured in the September 2008 issue of Country Home magazine!

The bag shown at right is the actual carpetbagger that will be in the magazine!"