Tribute to a 37 Year Career

I was hired to make a bag for the USFK Commander's wife as a retirement gift from an organization. Whenever I make bags for people I don't know that well, I'm always a littler nervous. I try to make bags reflect the personality of the person and really cater to the things they will use the bag for. Usually this comes down to the interior and location of pockets and patches. For this bag, I laid out the patches for each of his commands. Through reading his biography, I was able to get the patches in order. Here is the back of the bag:



The front of the bag was made in my normal style:


In the military, spouses don't have rank, but spouses definitely contribute to the earning of each rank. There aren't many 4 Star Generals in the military, so I thought it was important to include the rank in this bag. I didn't want the rank on the outside because I felt the receiver of this bag isn't an outside carrier of rank. I decided to place the rank on the inside, directly across from where it would be if it had been on the outside. I thought this was more symbolic to the way that spouses carry the career of their spouse on the inside, close to their hearts.



It was a privilege to create this bag, as it is with all the bags I create. Right now there is another bag in the works for a very special military lady...more to come on that soon.