Decisions, decisions

Thank you for all of your suggestions for bags to consider making and/or purchasing. I'm going to look into buying some of the patterns you suggested and amplify my bag-making skills. In the meantime, I've decided to buy myself a school/work/professional bag. As a vegetarian, I try to avoid leather, and as a connoisseur of handmade, I try and support other artisans/craftspeople. As it turns out, there's a great bag-maker, Jenny, not too far from where I'm living in Brooklyn this summer. You can check out her neat shop here.

I was trying to decide between the Carry-All Tote

and the Everyday Tote,


and Jenny was kind enough to let me stop by her studio to check out the prototypes. In the end, I decided that the shape of the Everyday Tote, along with the zipper, make it the better option for me.

But there's another decision to make: what fabric? Jenny takes custom orders at no extra charge, and I'm torn between the Joel Dewberry Ivory Orchid shown above and the Joel Dewberry Stone Wildflower as the exterior,


with a Mulberry Orchid interior:

I'm getting the bag as a birthday present for myself, paid for with money from some freelance editing projects, and I want it to last. I want it a somewhat neutral but not boring exterior that I can wear with all my clothes -- and I wear a lot of black, brown, white, blue, and red (though rarely altogether!). My nice winter coat is purple,

and I'd like the bag exterior to work with it as well as with my lighter jackets, which are blue and black. I *think* either the cream or grey will do that. At the moment I'm assuming Jenny can procure either fabric combination, and I don't think that's unrealistic.

I think I know which way I'm leaning, but I'm going to sleep on it and hopefully make a decision tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd love your input -- do you Ivory Orchid or Stone Wildflowers? Questions I should ask myself before deciding? Methods of decision-making?

* * *
Thanks to all of you who volunteered to send me scraps for the wall-art quilt for the Indian orphanage. Although I'm not home to check the mail, my sources tell me at least one envelope has arrived. If you have any warm (red/pink/orange/yellow) scraps and don't know what to do with them, be in touch! While I'm itching to craft in NY, I have no fabric and no sewing machine until I head home, so I'm collecting scraps through the beginning of August. Thanks again to those of you who have responded; what a wonderful network the blogworld has created.