Every bag I make starts the same way — a length of good fabric on the table above the bookshop, a threaded needle, and a design I've drawn out by hand.
I learned to quilt forty-one years ago, and the first thing I was taught still holds: if the seams are honest, everything else follows.
Then the shops that made things properly began disappearing — and the adverts took their place. Lovely quilted bags, photographed beautifully; what came through the letterbox was flat, thin, printed on. Those photos fooled me too.
So I make them myself now. Small batches, quilted at my table in Hay-on-Wye, the way the shops we miss would have made them.
A few hundred women across Britain carry one. Several came back for a second — usually as a gift for someone who'd been eyeing theirs.
— Maple, Hay-on-Wye
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Made by hand in Hay-on-Wye.
This bag takes me about four hours. I cut, layer, pad and quilt each one myself at the table above the bookshop in Hay-on-Wye — never more than 20 of a design.
I turn 70 this year, so for a fortnight everything's 70% off — my way of saying thank you for staying with me this long, not a reason to rush you.
Press your palm flat against it when it arrives. You'll feel every stitch — that's how you know. And if anything's not right, it comes back to me for a full refund.
— Maple