Thursday, November 23, 2006

inspiration (part II)



a few months ago, G. asked me to make her a backpack, something I had never done before, but she was so enthusiastic about it that I accepted the challenge. When I'm about to start something new, I always struggle with the design for a long time. And backpacks are something not that easy to make, if you're looking for something different than the usual. I eventually found inspiration in this cute little design over at Flickr, and just made a couple of changes, like patchworking the body for more resistance, and adding an extra button for better closure and balance. G. loved it, so it's now on its way to Germany where I hope it will get a lot of use.

Still on inspiration, I'm still thinking about this post from Manda, on which I totally agree. I always try to name where my inspiration comes from, but sometimes I don't remember (not intentionally, of course, just really bad memory and forgetfulness which comes from trying to make too many things at the same time) so I apologize if I ever offended anyone in that way. That said, a lot of what inspires me does come from japanese crafts books and other magazines, like Manda has said, so I sometimes find it inevitable that I might make something similar to what another crafter has done (on concept, anyway), so for now I've stopped worrying so much about it.




 

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Está simplesmente linda! :o)

Flor said...

Linda!Adorei

Sarokas said...

espectaculo!!!!
fazes por encomenda??pode ser de outras cores??
beijokas electricas

hogan said...

What a wonderful backpack!

Anonymous said...

lovely!!!

.. said...

Adorável!

And inspiration, tough one. Ideas flow, get changed all the time which is part of what makes culture alive. I think we are trained in university and later ( me particularly, maybe ) to do attribution always, to quote, to give credit, it´s often the only type of academic reward there is, have people quote it and attribute it. With japanese magazines, it´s tough, if we do not speak japanese we don´t even know the right name of the magazine or book, much less author´s name, so no wonder first person writing about it in english gets more attention in english than the original japanese source. There are definite fads ( say that bag from Machine Made patchworks which IMO is not even the cutest in the book) though, but at the same timea lot of real simple things people came up with independently. But yeah, I hope I remember to attribute what pieces of ideas I get from this or that person - but if you see a lot of things, details can get blurry or forgotten!

Sue said...

Fantastic backpack, and I agree with you and Manda too. As long as you say where it comes from, then you are still giving credit to that person too.

Anonymous said...

Very chic backpack! And sturdy looking too.

Anonymous said...

Nice work! Love it.

Alex (The Sleepless Reader) said...

T., this is a winner! Great design, love the contrast of the red bottons!

Anonymous said...

lindo!

Dawn said...

that's an awesome backpack! you're so awesome!