The Long Way Back Home Messenger

Guys, another messenger bag for you. This one is mine :)



Mamma's got a brand new bag

I was dithering over a name. It was going to be The Money Saving Messenger because it's made entirely of scrap fabric and it saved me a lot of money, but then I went out and spent £7 on webbing at Ray-Stitch. So that name went out the window.

In the end, we've got a new one for the Barenaked Collection. I'm calling it the Long Way Back Home Bag. Why? Perhaps it's a kick-ass song, perhaps it's because the bag is blue, perhaps it's because the bag is just big enough to help me skip the country should the occasion arise*. Perhaps because it's just right to hold everything I call home.

See? Holds all of the important things

It's a bag from travels, meant for travels. The design is taken from a wrecked bag I had as a teen that has journeyed around Europe, the components are from 5 different places I've called home and hopefully the bag will be trekking a lot again this year.

Incidentally, do you know where I was last week? Here's a clue:

Spot the bag...

I've decided to road test it properly on a whirlwind trip to NYC, and am glad to say it took some abuse and fared really well! 

I somehow managed to cram in a flying visit to Mood (realising on 34st I'd never actually looked up the address), and came away with two beautiful silks. I was overwhelmed the first time I visited Goldhawk Road, but man, Mood is something else! That place is crazy! 

Concerned about the organised chaos

Anyway, back to the bag. I used Simplicity 2358 as a base again, but made some very heavy functional modifications. I demand a lot from a bag so I took features from all the bags I like and have tried to remake them. Mostly this includes a hell of a lot of extra pockets. The one on the back from my other version is there again, I added 3 in the main compartment, a hidden zippered pocket between the main compartment and the flap facing, and a whole new compartment in the front of the bag.

Concealed pocket between main compartment and flap facing

Closed

The new compartment is a basic zippered addition, with a few extra pockets in it. Can you tell I'm a fan of pockets?

The new compartment and its interior pockets

One other functional addition before looking at design features. Check this out, IT'S ONLY A BLOODY BUILT-IN RAIN COVER!

Aaaaaah!

Check it out!

I had some spare rip-stop and elastic (fugly knicker elastic in case you were wondering) that needed using, so I made a rain cover. Boom.

Cut out a square and sew a  casing around the edge

Feeding fugly knicker elastic through...

So, I really wanted to take some time over the design aspects too. The colours are largely RGB (what else?) and most of the colour coordination has been consistent. The topstitching is a brightish blue, and complements the bright red strap. I had some spare cotton sateen ribbon so added that to the front compartment too. 

Okay, the strap is a little dodgy. These striped bag straps are absolutely everywhere at the moment and Raystich has an excellent selection of colourways for them. I'm absolutely in love with them. However, finding the correct size hardware in London is impossible (38mm), I hate it. In the end, the best fudge-solution was a backpack slider and a spare 50mm d-ring. Not ideal, definitely looks a little fudged but it does the job. 

The D-ring in action

My favourite design feature is the piecing (cough, fudge fix, cough) in the main compartment, which is finished with some golden topstitching. I really wanted to use the kelsch in this project and am so glad it was possible, if only just.

All of the components laid out in construction order

Reduced to two separate pieces

Construction was a BIG headscratching moment as there were a lot of pieces to fit together in the right order. I spent many hours staring at it all laid out, just trying to visualise how it would work. In the end, I pulled the whole bag inside out through the front compartment. It was a difficult birth.

Big bag, tiny hole

The bag is settling in well to its new life. In the spirit of showing that it's actually being used, here's a picture of it in action after we discovered a topiary elephant in North London last week.

Topiary elephant. Casual.

That's it for now! See ya!

K

*turns out the airport authorities might be a bit suspicious of baggage you make yourself. It may lead to your precious me-makes getting swabbed, and generally getting held up at every opportunity.

PS. Many thanks to Katrina from Muffin Top Vintage for some of the lining fabric, it's a vintage curtain, she made an awesome dress from it an kindly donated some yardage to the epic swap last year. Thank you! It's gone to good use!

Shorts...

I'm a big subscriber to the idea of enjoying the learning process. With sewing, this means relishing in some horrendous failures before slicing them up and arriving at a much better solution. This has applied recently (loose definition of recently) to my sewing of summer shorts.

Let's take a look at the first pair:

Uuuuh, I guess they look okay...

Wait, what?

Oh.

Bahahahahaha

After a previous post about deliberate pattern cutting, I totally messed up these shorts. The check is a very solid Alsatian Kelsch (linen) and the blue is the spongy linen from the Boomerang Dress. Bad cutting plan and with a lot of messing up. But hey...it's a new pattern and it looks like it fits. Surely that's good...

From this abomination, I immediately restarted the project, cut new fabric (actually leftovers from the Pinch Me Bag) and arrived at these:

Full length

Rolled up with cuffs

 Big hooray, the shorts feature an invisible zip in the side seam and flat felled seams throughout. I don't think I used an iron at all to press out seams, the fabric reacted really well to just being pressed out by hand. Definitely a surprise! But what's the bit I really love about these shorts?

Hint...

 Pockets! Actual welt pockets!

You know that odd feeling of victory where you've tried out a new skill or technique successfully? That's pretty amazing, but when it happens at 1.30am immediately after a failed project and many hours going loopy in front of the machine...well it has the potential to lead to a full-on meltdown. Trust me, when I finished these pockets and tried them out for the first time, I lost my mind. It looked a bit like this:

Just for proof's sake, you can see the pocket bags and facing. The Kelsch is a great facing because it doesn't stretch or give too much. Hopefully there's enough to be used as other facings!

If you're wondering why I'm even posting this now when we're well into November, it's largely because these shorts have been a gateway into a whole host of other projects since. They have have been a nice little milestone in the learning journey. Hopefully more to follow soon, I have bags of cool stuff to show you!