Babb displays bags, quilts at Wishing Spring Gallery
Lenora Babb has been sewing since she was a child and had a career working with fabrics and craft products. Now she is retired and shares her talent with the Wishing Spring Gallery.
She earned a degree in fashion merchandising and then worked for a while as a store manager for Joann Fabrics. She then worked her way up to the position of fabric buyer at the Joann’s home office. Then she worked for several years as a craft buyer with Walmart and then with a company called Pellon, which makes interfacing and batting for sewing and quilting. At Pellon she was vice president of sales. In 2022 she retired, and that same year she joined the Artisan Alliance at Wishing Spring.
Babb said while working at Pellon, she learned a lot about batting and saw the quilts that people were making and wanted to try it.
“I love the piecing together of the fabric,” she said. She is a member of the Calico Cut-ups Quilt Guild. She said she made so many quilts that she reached the point where she was running out of places to display them.
“Bags are my current love because you can take a bag with you and enjoy it, versus a quilt that’s either on a wall or folded in a chest,” Babb said.
When she was working she went to trade shows, and there were wonderful patterns and fabrics and designs for bags, she said.
“Usually, for me, projects start with the fabric,” she said.
She makes a large bag called the “Big Azz Bag” that probably holds four or five gallons, she said. She has made eight or 10 of them, she said. She also has some Japanese-themed bags on display at the gallery.
Babb said she used to make most of her clothes, and she has started deconstructing some old suits and reconstructing them into bags. She said she will do that more in the future because there is no market for suits anymore, but there is a market for the fabric.
She also makes “clothing protectors” or “adult bibs.” They are large enough to cover an adult’s entire shirt front and come in different fabric patterns.
She has lived in Bella Vista since 2002.
“I really enjoy being part of the Artisan Alliance and the gallery,” she said. “I feel truly blessed to get to work with such talented and amazing people that make the gallery such a Bella Vista treasure.”
Babb said a lot of people have not discovered the gallery yet.
“We always ask people, ‘Have you been in the gallery before?’ and most say, ‘It’s my first time, and I drive by every day.’ Once people see how great the selection is and how talented the artists are, they come back. I think many people think because this says ‘gallery’ that that’s all this is, but everything in here is for sale,” she said.