A Show Sample Salvage

December 6, 2020 / Kat /

So…

At our last show, the MAQF in Feb 2020, (which seems like FOREVER ago), I was helping a customer when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone struggling with one of our samples. I was reaching out to help her when I heard an ominous …

“crunch”….

Now I know this gal didn’t break the buckle on purpose. No one would ever do that! But I do think she wasn’t paying sufficient attention to what she was doing. I know this because she was talking & looking at her friend while also trying to re-buckle the pocket on this bag. Either way though, I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy fix!

And as if this whole process was enough of a “pain in the neck”, it was made all the more complicated because I had NO MORE buckles of this particular style, nor could I find any online. Every buckle I had in stock just didnt’ fit together with the “female portion” that was left on this bag, which meant BOTH parts were going to have to be replaced! UGH!

Since this is a focal area for the Sling Along it was really important to take the previous stitching out VERY CAREFULLY. And of course this was “reinforced” stitching, which made the ripping out all the more challenging. I began by removing the “Male portion: of the buckle.
And of course it wasn’t enough to just get the “female” portion of this buckle ripped out. I needed to also rip out a good deal of the vertical stitching on the buckle holder in order to provide myself with enough room to stitch everything back in place. Ugh!
And since I had to go with a totally new buckle unit, I opted to go with metal this time just in case another “gorilla” comes along and gets rough with my bag again ! hahahaha So here’s the male portion in place and ready to stitch.
Of course the process of stitching the buckle back in place was a whole lot easier to accomplish than the process of ripping it out was!
But I gotta tell ya, stitching the “female side” of this buckle in place (above) was a bit more complicated than the “male side” was. In order to get it onto my machine as shown above. You might notice that I had to rip out a good deal of the webbing above the buckle first!.
And once the buckle was attached, I had to go back and re-stitch the webbing to the bag.
So here’s my Sling Along sample, all finished and almost as good as new… I really think that if I hadn’t told you about this problem already, you’d probably never have guessed that this bag had to be ripped apart and fixed because of the buckle “issue”.
And besides… I think I actually like the look of the metal buckle WAY better anyway!

Now if only we had a show to go to, right?

So… long story short…

I sure am glad I was able to fix this bag since it’s arguably one of the most iconic I’ve made. and while most of our customers are very mindful in how they handle our samples, there will always be a few customers who are, shall we say… a bit like a gorilla in the way they handle our bags! So it’s a wonder things like this don’t happen more often than they do. At least this particular story had a happy ending!

And now it’s your turn….

Do you have any interesting show stories you’d like share here? And remember, we love reading your comments and answering your questions too, so please feel free to leave either or both in the space provided below.

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Kat

5 Comments

  1. Beth on December 6, 2020 at 2:16 pm

    I like that metal buckle! It looks nice on the bag.



    • Kat on December 6, 2020 at 6:00 pm

      I do too, but I never wouldve made the change except for this incident! 🙂 Thank you!



  2. Tina on December 6, 2020 at 3:48 pm

    Great save!



    • Kat on December 6, 2020 at 6:01 pm

      Thanks Tina! Now that its over, I like it too! 🙂



  3. Margie on December 7, 2020 at 5:58 pm

    Me too! The metal buckle looks much better I think!