My love of Americana, of our flag, of red, white, and blue, came honestly. My father served in Vietnam. He was passionate about this country and what it stood for, about democracy, about the idea that what this flag represents belongs to all of us. That love passed to me, and it has never left.
So when I felt pulled toward an Americana colorway, I understood where that pull was coming from. It was coming from him.
I also knew I wanted to be careful. Not because I was uncertain, but because I am aware of how loaded those colors feel right now for a lot of people. I do not believe our flag or those colors belong to any political party. They never have. Making this bag was, in a quiet way, a push against that idea.
More than anything though, it was a push toward something meaningful. So much of what drives my work is the desire to honor my father, my heritage, or an idea that moves me. That is what keeps me precise at the sewing machine. That is what makes me slow down and be thoughtful about every seam, every placement, every choice. When a design carries something real, the work becomes an act of care rather than just construction.
This one carried something real from the beginning.
Every bag I make starts the same way. Not with a pattern. Not with a cut. It starts with a feeling I cannot quite name yet, something that lives somewhere between an image I saw and an idea I have been turning over for longer than I probably realize.
I scroll Pinterest the way some people take walks. It is how I think. I look at colors, patterns, quotes, textures, things that have nothing to do with bags at all. I am not looking for a template. I am looking for the thing that makes something click into place.
For this one, I knew early on that I wanted red, white, and navy. But every time I pulled those three colors together in the traditional way they just sat there. Flat. Familiar. Nothing moved.
I started with a solid navy bag and red and white stars. It was not it. Then I tried draping the colors diagonally across the whole body. Closer, but still not landing where I needed it to land.
So I pulled back from the traditional palette and started asking different questions. What if the red was not bright? What if it was deep and a little muted, something that looked like it had some age to it? What if the white was not white at all, but that dusty, sunwashed cream, the French Vanilla Outlaw leather I keep coming back to because nothing else has that matte, crackled, no-two-pieces-alike quality?
When I put those two together, something shifted. The diagonal stripes I had been working with started to feel right. I tapered them so they were narrower at the top of the bag and fanned out wider toward the curve at the bottom. The shape gave the design movement. It stopped being static.
Then came the stars.
I knew I wanted them, but I did not want them to match the rest of the bag in feeling. The body was old Americana, worn and warm and a little faded. I wanted the stars to be the opposite. Bright. Present. Alive.
I went with a croc-embossed navy, a vivid blue with texture and a little light to it. Not dark. Not heavy. I placed four stars on the front face, worked through where they wanted to sit, and hand-stitched and riveted each one. There is no deeper meaning behind the number four. They just felt right there.
When I look at this bag, I see exactly what I was reaching for from the beginning. The dark red and that dusty cream remind me of sunlight trying to break through. And when it finally does, it lands on those stars. That is what I was building toward. Hope trying to find its way through.
Then came the lining, and this part of the process is one of my favorites.
I had a lining selected. It was fine. It would have worked. But it did not add anything to the spirit of the bag, and I knew it. So I did something I love to do when I am stuck. I took the unfinished front panel, stripes and stars and all, and I drove it down to Mosaic Fabrics here in Vista. My local fabric store. Because sometimes you cannot choose a lining from memory. You have to hold the work up against something and wait for the right answer to find you.
I made about three passes through the store. The first pass was about elimination. Dark navy was not doing it. It felt heavy where I needed light. And florals, which you know I love deeply, were not right for this design either. I wanted something that when you opened the bag and looked inside, felt hopeful. Felt bright. Felt like possibility.
I even went looking for something with fish. An abstract fish print. I know how that sounds. But that is how my brain works when I am designing, I follow the pull even when it does not make obvious sense, and I could not find what I had in mind.
So I kept walking. And I kept coming back to one fabric. A Kaffe Fassett print in a bright, almost cornflower blue, covered in bold abstract blooms surrounded by white pebbling. Vivid and a little unexpected. I held the front panel up against it and I knew.
Here is the thing I noticed that sealed it. The blue of this fabric is not the same blue as the navy leather strap. It is not the same blue as the croc stars. It is its own shade entirely. And that felt right to me, because I believe we can love the same things without loving them in exactly the same way. We do not all have to be the same shade to belong together.
And yes, I went in saying no florals, and I came out with florals. Sometimes the design knows better than you do.
If you have followed Daylin Skye for any length of time, you know how much I care about the inside of a bag. I used to say it all the time: always look inside, because there is so much more to us than just the outside. The exterior of this bag is meant to stop a stranger on the street. But that lining, the one you see when you reach in for your lip gloss or pull out your card to pay for your coffee, that one is just for you. I want it to say something. I want it to feel like a little gift every single time.
This colorway is called Septima. She is making her debut on the Classic Fanny and will be worked into other styles from my line as I continue building with her.
She is handmade, small batch, and there is no restock plan. When she is gone, she is gone.
She is in the shop now.
