"Wabi-sabi Saturday" and "Up-cycling Challenge #1"

My friends Char and Linda from Junk Evolution and I are planing to have an event named "Wabi-Sabi Saturday" on April 9th. Doesn't it sounds interesting? This event is mainly for Mother's day. For customers who are looking for something very special for a Mother's day gift. On that day, I will be at their shop Junk Evolution (in Down Town South Bend) all day long and take orders for custom bags and purses. The fun part of this event is that customer will bring in some materials for making purses like old clothes, tablecloth,  scarves and so on. Something like a special piece of clothing from someone who passed. 

Wabi-sabi  represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience.  The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent and incomplete"......(excerpt from Wikipedia)

Wabi-sabi is a very profound idea but we simply interpreted it "finding beauty in old or imperfect things and loving them for what they are." That is why we picked the word "Wabi-sabi" for the title of our special event. There is a poster Char made for this event below.

I made four bags out of old clothes from thrifty stores as samples for showing to customers. I found those lovely materials in pretty good condition. Some skirts and a baby girl dress.

And Char got these old wool jackets for me. They are old but very well-made using high quality wool. I made one large shoulder bag out of one of them by now. And I am going to make another soon.

Today, I show you this little purse made of the adorable baby dress in the picture above. I call this project "Up-cycling Challenge #1".

I loved the details and colors of this little dress. So I didn't converted it so much. I am glad it turned very well. This little purse looks so cute and lovely. I hope people will come to this event and give me a chance to face to this "Up-cycling Challenge" some more. I will post about "Challenge #2,3,4" soon.

Lastly, I would like to say thank you again to Junk Evolution and Circa Arts Gallery for having the donation jar for Japan Earthquake Relief. And also to their customers who donated for Japan.