The kitchen table
One rescued towel, one borrowed sewing machine, one tote that every friend on the beach asked about.
Entry one — 2021
It started with a towel too good to toss.
At twenty, Burt pulled a sun-faded striped towel out of the family donate pile, cut it apart on the kitchen table, and sewed it into a tote on her mom’s old machine. Zipper from a broken windbreaker. Buttons from a jar. Her friends all wanted one.
Five summers on, nothing about the recipe has changed: rescued towels and thrift finds, hot-washed, cut by hand, double-stitched, and finished with hardware that already lived a life. Every bag is the only one of its kind — because every towel is.
story layout by Rooted Coast Design →
The log, abridged
Four entries that mattered
The market stall
The Saturday farmers’ market discovers the towel totes — sold out by noon, orders taken on a legal pad.
Cobblestone Row
Burt’s Bags becomes official — est. 2023, right on the patch — and moves into a converted dockside warehouse with towel shelves sorted by color.
Rigger on watch
The house dog holds down a repurposed sea trunk by the door while the home studio turns donate-pile towels into cargo.
What we hold to
The standing orders
Mend first
Nothing new but the thread
Made in view
Rooted Coast Design — demo notes
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Design note: people buy from people
An origin story turns a product site into a trust site — and trust is what converts first-time visitors. We structured this page as a ship’s log so the history reads like a voyage, not a résumé.