FALL RIVER — In her new studio in the Narrows Center for the Arts, Barbara Materna is setting up shop making and selling her Babs line of handbags.
Discovering a felted wool handbag in a shop in Wickford, Rhode Island, was the creative spark that led Materna from a career as a technical writer to handbag designer, knitter, stitcher and owner of the burgeoning company Babs.
As one of several new artists and artisans to locate in the entirely new artist studios on the second floor of the Narrows Center for the Arts, Materna plans to have her studio open on Friday nights so concert-goers can get a look at her bags and learn about the process she uses to make them.
When she started out several years ago with the idea of making a felted bag like the one she saw in that boutique, Materna had no idea where it would lead her. At the time, she was looking for a way to relax after her day job as a technical writer in Cambridge so she thought the knitted bag would make for an interesting project.
“I always loved to sew and I love fibers so I decided to give it a try,” recalled Materna, a resident of Tiverton, of her first attempt at making a felted wool bag.
It starts with her knitting a bag using wool yarn. Then the bag is washed using a special process to agitate the wool fibers and shrink the yarn, resulting in a sturdier and more textural fabric. “After about 500 attempts I can now determine how it’s going to come out when I wash it,” she said.
Once she mastered that process, Materna decided to blend wool and alpaca yarns together into the same bag to achieve even more texture. Calling those designs Sheeply Chic, she started selling the bags at her original studio in the Hope Artiste Village in Providence, online and at boutiques and various farmer’s markets.
Materna then branched out to using a heavier German felted wool for another line of Babs’ bags called Jack and Cookie. Those bags, which are a bit more structural, have found their biggest fan-base in Wellesley, where she sells them at a farmers market there. Even when she thought she may have saturated the market there with the bags, she found customers who were coming back for more, collecting them in different colors, she said.
For the most part, her color palate for those bags runs in the classical colors of grey, hunter green, and black with the occasional pop of a bright color such as yellow or red.
Thinking about the boiled wool bags as three-season accessories, Materna branched out again with her Coastal and City Cruisers line of overnight and weekend bags. The durable treated cotton twill bags are printed with vintage topographical maps from areas such as Providence and Little Compton.
Ranging in price from about $70 to $290, every bag in her collection is handmade from scratch and the durable wool, coated in lanolin, is very easy to keep clean, she said.
Find out more about the Babs line of bags at www.BABSetc.com.
Email Linda Murphy at lmurphy@heraldnews.com.