Featured ETSY Store & Mary Jo's Cloth...

Several weeks ago we asked you to send in your ETSY Storefronts. Boy, did you. We are loving the diverse products you are all creating. Truly wonderful. We think you have a fine passion for things made  of cloth and are experts and perfectionists when it comes to the finished product!
As promised we are featuring one of the many ETSY Shops that were submitted. We will continue to feature these lovely and inspired ETSY Storefronts from time to time in future articles. We love to go to one of your ETSY Shops and click on the icon of the store owner and read all about you, what you have done, what you are doing and what inspires YOU. You are a talented bunch of folks and we know that you have a choice and we just have to give you a BIG thank-you for shopping maryjos.com.
Send in your Etsy link or your Online Store or your Website/Blog that features your products that are made using Mary Jo's Cloth. You may be the next featured article.

Featured Esty Store: JPATPURSES:  

Janese is a BIG Seller on ETSY, she is the kind of gal that will inspire you. Janese proves that ETSY can be a great source of income and a wonderful outlet to market the ARTY projects you are passionate about. She has done just that!

Tell us about yourself. Hi, my name is Jenese Patanella, therefore explaining my shop name JPATPURSES. I am a wife and mother of two teenage daughters and a wonderful Corgi dog named Ginger. I have lived in many regions of the United States but have spent the last 20 years in the Southeast. My Bachelors degree is in Accounting, about as far away from creating handbags and accessories as you can get. After over 25 years in the corporate world it was time to explore my more creative side.

Apart from creating things, what do you do? I spend a great deal of time just in survival mode. I think that in today’s world that is not too uncommon. I love to garden, walk my dog, and spend tons of time with my family. I am also an avid reader and must always have a book to wind down with at the end of each day.  

How do you promote your work? My first year here on Etsy, I was on the forums almost every day. The SNS thread in the forums is a great way to get to know other Etsy sellers and really helped me get established. I have a blog and flickr accounts. Joined all the groups and even did my own paid outside advertising. Now, with word of mouth and repeat customers I am able to focus more on new designs, sewing, and less on promoting.  

What first made you want to become an artist? If you had told me as little as two years ago I would have been creating and selling my items online I would have laughed. I always enjoyed doing crafts. As a little girl my spending money would always go either to buying books or my latest craft project. So I guess it was well hidden until I was old enough to realize how much I really loved it! When I was a teenager I had a part-time job in a store that had a fabric department. It was then when I started buying and collecting fabrics. I still have some of those fabrics but still don’t have the heart to cut into them!!!

The opportunity to sale online presented itself quite by accident one afternoon when my daughters mentioned that they would like to have the most recent brand name handbags that were a big hit among their friends. I told them that I would be more than happy to try to make them each one myself. So I pulled out the sewing machine from the back of the closet and went to work. It felt good to be sewing again. Several of their friends at school inquired as to where they got their new purses and were surprised to hear that their mother was the creator. It was this positive feedback that initially inspired me to consider the prospect of sewing handbags and selling them online.

Please describe your creative process how, when, materials, etc. My process is very sporadic. I wake up each morning and after everybody is out the door, I try to do as much sewing as possible but rarely sit down and sew for more then 10 minutes at a time. I get most of my inspiration from trying to create the most functional and efficient items as possible. I love trying to make items that make life more organized. One of the reasons I developed my special bat quilt interfacing technique is because I wanted structure and form to my creations, thus making them easier to use. 

Thanks Janese, wow you are an ETSY star! Keep up the great work. 

Do you have an ETSY Shop? Send us the link today!
A reminder: It is that time of year already, Halloween.
Start sending us photos of your costumes made with Mary Jo's Cloth. We will feature the top submissions and a slide show of the contenders? Feeling lucky? Send in your costume pic today!