Patches! ..and the evolution of an idea.

Funny how moving one part into place opens things up. While we were on vacation last February, walking on a beach with our friend John, it suddenly came to me "Waxwing" bags. I told Nancy and John and the idea was greeted warmly.  I knew it was going to stick, unlike the many previous stabs which never felt quite right. 

Having the name in hand allowed me to start doodling and playing with logo ideas, and slowly the image above has taken form. It will likely evolve further, but I'm happy enough with it that I finally decided to get patches made. They will now go on all bags I make. Its a sign I feel solid enough about my work that I'm willing to attach a name to it. Fun stuff for sure!

The patches, made by Falls Creek Outfitters in Pennsylvania. 

I took the sketch below (done on an iPad with 53's Paper app) and moved it over to Illustrator where I spent a bunch of time cleaning it up and trying to balance letters and give the waxwing some flow. I wanted to have a clean image but keep the handmade quality of the design, and I"m quite happy with where it landed. For future iterations of the patch, I'll beef up the lines of the bird and probably drop the town/state lettering. Like any design, its possible to keep messing with it forever, so at some point I just said good enough and got the patches produced, and I'm glad I did.