Liz Sabo was studying photography in Italy nine years ago when she came across a small shop with a sign that read:"Everything in here is handmade, so we might be out of your size." "It just kind of dawned on me that each one of the items was being made by someone," she says. "We've kind of grown up in a mass-produced culture, and we don't think about the time or the hands that went into making something." Once home, she made a handbag that caught the eyes of co-workers who wanted their own. Smooth Operator: Sabo works out of her Lakewood attic where about 15 samples of microsuede fabrics in a variety of weights are pinned to a small corkboard. "Microsuede is a really rich material and signifies a certain softness and luxuriousness," she says. Limited Edition: Each season, Sabo releases only two or three new styles and crafts an average of 50 bags per style. She never makes more than five of each style using the same fabric and pattern. "Rather than buying 50 yards of one fabric, I'll buy 10 different fabrics and 5 yards each," she says. New Beginnings: In 2012, Sabo designed and hand-stamped his-and-hers shopping totes for a friend's wedding shower — one with a grocery list of veggies and the other with cuts of meats. It paved the way for a series of Word Totes ($44). Sabo drafts and prints patterns from her computer and then screens and coats the fabric in her basement washbasin. "Doing screen-printing has opened a whole range of creating my own fabric," she says. Design Process: Sabo carries three notebooks with her — one with notes from reading blogs and newspapers, another with ideas for marketing, newsletters and her company's website, and one with designs and measurements. "It's a lot of going back and forth and trying to find which fabric fits those characteristics," she says.
FIND IT: Purchase Liz Sabo Handcrafted Bags at Paradise Flower Market in Beachwood and Still Point Gallery in Little Italy. MORE INFO: lizsabo.com
