I am a 30 year old woman who lives in New Hampshire now, but grew up in the outskirts of Boston. My line of bags has been around since 2006 and I am beginning to update my site with new spring fabrics.  Women can design the bags for themselves so the bag reflects her individuality and style perfectly.  My target audience is young women who want to look hip, but also want something more original and tailored for her. The majority of my fabrics are 100% cotton quilting fabrics. I love patterns and color and am drawn to many vintage/retro looking fabrics, I use mostly cotton because it is durable and washable and I have the easiest time finding those types of fabrics. I do have a little stash of fabrics left over from my grandmother which are mostly silks, wools and bits of suede.

My grandmother was a seamstress at Bonwit Teller in Boston, I grew up watching her skillfully use a needle and thread to create and recreate beautiful fashions for her wealthy clients. She seemed so at ease with her work, and would often show her a picture of a dress or outfit and she would make a pattern out of newspaper or tissue paper and sew me an exact replica of what I had shown her. I was in awe of her talent. One of the perks from her job was that we got to keep (and I got to play with) all of the extra scraps of fabric left over from her alterations. I used to take those scraps of fabric and create my own designs; (mostly scrunchies, but hey it was something) from there I wanted to be a fashion designer. Unfortunately I didn’t follow that dream and went off to college and did the corporate thing for awhile. When corporate life didn’t work out (a blessing in disguise) I felt as though I was granted another opportunity to live out my dream and I started Eleni (named after my grandmother) and that’s basically how I got started. I’ve only been in business for a year and I just had a baby in December, so I am slowly starting to work on updating the site with spring fabrics and am working on an Eleni baby line that will include swaddle blankets and Boppy pillow covers in cool fabrics.

Mine isn’t so much a design nightmare story but the first craft fair I did, was a pretty big one and I was ill prepared. My display table was an old card table with a brown cloth draped over it, one of the other handbag designers came over and started drilling me with questions, about where I got my materials and what type of sewing machine I used, then remarked that he could tell by my display that I was a newbie and was shocked that I was doing such a big show for the first time. To make matters worse, my location in the venue was the worst one to be had they put me right outside of the men’s restroom; I could see directly into their bathroom and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty!

That first fair though really got under my skin and I honestly didn’t want to go back the second day.  I was scared to talk to customers and scared that the other bag designers were going to start freaking me out again. The sales the first day were awful and I had put so much into it for months and was really disappointed. Then I started to think about it from a different perspective and thought well, if I had done really well (although it would have been great), how would I deal with failure on my second or third show? Having a rough time the first show was a blessing in disguise because I thought, well when you are on the bottom, there is no where to go but up! I think that’s what makes it worth it, the feeling that there are always new things to try and new heights to strive to reach, it might sound cheesy but you need to have these types of motivational talks with yourself to keep going, and I do and it works!