Revisiting the Wave Purse Organizer

The Wave Purse Organizer made waves...

Who would have thought that my tenth blog post — published on January 4, 2014 — would have the incredible fortune to strike enormous appeal with a simple little idea? (Not me. I was hoping, but...)

By the time I got to week ten of my blog, I had published a series of posts about my first sewing project in decades, The Professional Tote. I had blogged about making my first purse, ChrisW Designs' Bella. I had showed off some of the little projects that I had made, mostly from free tutorials found around the web. And I had discussed some ways to cut costs by using some offbeat fabric sources.

I remember thinking during those early weeks, what do I need to do to drive some actual traffic to my blog? (Because at the time, the only visits I was logging were referrer spam and 'bots.)

That question was actually easily answered. After all, what had I been doing for the past year? Searching out interesting freebies!

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So the solution was to offer up an interesting freebie. And to make a long story short, I had stumbled upon some purse organizer patterns, so I decided to make one of my own and ultimately the Wave Purse Organizer was born. On January 5, I sent an email to AllFreeSewing.com describing the project. They responded the next day, saying that it was being evaluated by an appropriate editor. A couple of days later, I had successfully established my first external link.

And what a link it's been. The Wave Purse Organizer has been featured several times in their newsletter over the past year, with the result that my tenth blog post is still far and away my most popular. On any given day, at any given hour, it's the most common gateway to my blog... in fact, fully one third of my traffic comes through there.

Several weeks ago, one of my early supporters, Nekane (from the Basque Country region of Spain), reached out to me to let me know that she had featured my Wave Purse Organizer on her own blog, Non dago itarea? (literally "where is the [your] thimble"?)

A shot from Nekane's blog featuring her take on the Wave Purse Organizer...

She also wanted to know if it was all right for her to offer the whole tutorial for her readers; in Spanish, of course. Well, I was tremendously honoured to give my whole-hearted "permission", and I think she's done a superb job.

Nekane's second Wave Purse Organizer, created as part of her tutorial...

The thing is, I've always been curious as to what everyone has done with their organizer. Not to be outdone by the popularity of the original blog post, the corresponding free PDF that is available via my Craftsy shop has been downloaded almost twelve hundred times as of this writing.

And yet (apart from the above) I've never seen anyone else's creation... Let's get some of these Wave Purse Organizers out of hiding! Send me your pictures... and take a look at this post for another update on the WPO.