Cheney woman’s in the bag for fun

Karen Bates grew up with a mother who was a professional tailor and taught her to sew. Her father once bought an apartment complex and taught her how to paint. She was in charge of painting the kitchens and bathrooms.

“He taught me how to paint properly,” she said.

When Bates became a single mother and needed a job, she started painting rental homes in Cheney. Once her business grew, she began painting interiors and exteriors of people’s homes, playing with colors and getting creative.

At 62, she’s now retired, so she has combined what her mother taught her about sewing with her love of mixing and matching colors. She started out one day by making herself a tote bag for her trips to the grocery store. This opened up a whole new hobby and business.

“I just love working with fabric and color,” she said.

The Cheney Bag Lady is now selling her tote bags online. The site has been up for about a month and a half, and she’s already sold three items.

She remodeled her 102-year-old farmhouse just outside of Cheney and turned a room on the second floor into a sewing room so she has space to work among her bags, fabrics and spools of thread.

Bates decided to sell her wares while chatting online with other women from all over the world who sew and stitch. The other women introduced her to a Web site where she could post pictures of her bags and the other items she sells.

“I was having fun. I didn’t pay attention that I should sell these,” she said.

She sews two kinds of bags. One with a mesh lining could be used for grocery shopping, carrying personal items, or even a pet.

“There’s room enough for a small dog in here,” she said.

Bates is interested in style and function. “Grocery store totes don’t have to look like the ones they have in the grocery store,” she said.

The other bag she makes is a quilted version with lots of pockets for pens and other items.

“It was all about the totes at first,” she said.

Once she started playing with the bags, however, she taught herself how to crochet. Now, she sells toddler-sized washcloths and dishcloths that come in a six-pack.

“I’ve just kind of been busting out all over,” she said.

She also makes eyeglass cases to match the bags. The mesh totes run anywhere from $40 to $50, the quilted bags are around $65. She said the mesh totes can take her around 3  1/2 hours to make. The quilted ones take about seven hours.

Not only is she selling her crafts online, but she went to her first craft fair last weekend in Spokane.

When she’s not busy sewing, she’s busy with the remodel of her home, which she has lived in for about 11 years. She looks for different fabrics for her bags in area fabric stores and the Ben Franklin in Cheney.

She said she is not thinking about the Cheney Bag Lady as a business.

“It’s just really for fun,” Bates said.