Sharon Cuddemi’s late husband Carl used to call her gooney. Don’t ask Cuddemi why, but that was her nickname.
So when she started sewing bags and selling them, Cuddemi needed a name for her product line – something for people to identify her by. A friend suggested using her nickname, and soon Gooney Bags was born.
“As goofy as it is, people remember me,” she said.
Now if you’re not the kind of person who spends weekends at craft fairs, you may have never heard of Cuddemi or her line of bags. She doesn’t have a website or sell them in stores; instead she does a handful of fairs in the Concord area each fall, and that’s just about it.
The rest of the year she sews and sews – and sews and sews.
“I just make bags the whole year and bring what I have,” Cuddemi said.
Gooney Bags started about five or six years ago. Cuddemi has always been a sewer, learning to make doll clothes out of felt from her grandmother at an early age and eventually making clothes for herself and her children.
She saw a bag at the Golden Gese Quilt Shop and liked the pattern. She made the bag, using her own choice of fabric, and it was an instant hit.
“After, everyone said, ‘Oh you should sell these,’ ” Cuddemi said. “It seemed like there was a niche for it.”
So she started making them and brought a bunch to a craft fair at St. John’s Church.
“I really did well there, so that was kind of the catalyst,” she said.
Now, Cuddemi will find a picture in a book or a pattern and put her own twist on it. She likes to make her bags unique so her customers will feel the same way.
“The more I did, the more creative I wanted to be,” Cuddemi said. “If there’s a bag that’s popular I’ll make a lot of them, but no two bags are ever the same. You won’t see your bag walking down the street on anyone else.”
And when we say bags, we’re talking about handbags that some of you may know as pocketbooks. But Cuddemi also makes totes (for your own sewing stuff perhaps), evening bags, wallets and little cases that you can put mirrors in.
“They have patterns for any kind of bag,” she said. “Then I put my own spin on it.”
Usually after the fall craft fair season, she’ll take a little time off from making stuff – to sell that is. That’s when she sews stuff for herself or does special orders, and usually right around now is when she starts building her inventory.
“There really isn’t a time when I’m not sewing – at least that’s the way it seems,” Cuddemi said.
Her bags are all created with the use of a trusty, hi-tech sewing machine, but when it comes to getting the materials ready, that’s all done by hand.
“It’s tedious. Everything has to be cut out in the right way,” she said.
She also does embroidery and wool applique all by hand, learning the techniques from her mother, who was a seamstress. But a lot of the tricks of the trade, Cuddemi taught herself.
Cuddemi is proud of what she does, which is why she uses high quality fabric and hardware. She wants the bags to last, so customers come back each year.
“I have people that go to the fairs each year looking for me,” she said.
The prices range from $10 for a mirror case to $150 for a hand embroidered bag – but you can also find something in the middle, too. As we mentioned before, Cuddemi does custom bags and is happy to learn about what you’d like. Since she doesn’t have a website, her email, weares-sharon@comcast.net, is the way to touch base.
But FYI, Tuesdays aren’t the best day because that’s when she has a bunch of her grammar school friends come over for a little sewing class.
She really is sewing just about all the time.
