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December 2, 2009

'Bratpacks' selling well for Rocky Face woman

By Rachel Brown

What is now a booming business for Rocky Face homemaker Jessica Harris started with a birthday present for a friend’s child in 2005.

“I literally made a backpack out of clothes from Goodwill,” she explained.

Sans pattern, Harris set about designing a backpack to fit a 2-year-old. Her husband, Steve, suggested making it just big enough to carry a Dr. Seuss book. So Harris selected corduroy scraps and used clothes for the project and attached a turtle applique. Friends liked the backpack, and word spread.

Now, customers can select from the “Bratsacks” she keeps in stock or order one custom made. Harris said she’s made about 1,000 sales over the past two years, many through etsy.com and at the Chattanooga Market. The backpacks come in toddler sizes and “big kid” sizes with prices ranging from $28 to $35. Her products also include “Mama Bags,” which are colorful corduroy totes that can function as diaper bags. Prices range from $75 to $120.

“I’ve been sewing since I was little,” Harris said. “My grandmother taught me. She helped me make a dress when I was in third grade to wear to school.”

Now her grandmother, Jewell Breeden, helps her by babysitting Harris’ youngest child while she sews.

“She was real interested in it (as a child), and she loved to run the machine and still does,” Breeden said. “She wanted to learn. She’d spend the night with me, and we’d work on it.”

Harris said her sewing is inspired by the corduroy and patches popular during the 1990s. The 34-year-old said she spent several months following the bands Phish and The Grateful Dead after graduating from Northwest Whitfield High School. To support her music habit, Harris sewed and sold clothing at makeshift “shops” she and other vendors set up before and after the concerts.

“I made enough money to support myself while I was on tour,” she said. “I came back from tour one time with more money than I left with.”

The mother of 2-year-old Manny and 4-year-old Jake, Harris said her uncle recently built a sewing room where she makes the Bratsacks. Each one takes about 45 minutes to an hour to make, she said, though some of the intricately designed Mama Bags can take longer. She uses a 1968 industrial Singer machine, which she said is “lightning fast.”

“I literally work a part-time job. I sometimes sew 30 hours a week,” she said. “I’m really lucky because I know a lot of people are having their jobs taken away from them. Even if sales slow down, I still have a job.”

Harris’s Bratsacks were recently featured on parents.com, the site for Parents magazine, though not in the print edition. She said she ships all over the U.S. and also sends orders to Canada, China and the Ukraine.



Bratsacks online

www.bratsacks.com

www.parents.com/fun/toys/kid-toys/etsy-gifts/?page=16

www.etsy.com/shop/bratsacksbaby

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