The Barenaked Collection: One Week

This will be the first in a sporadic range of projects that called the Barenaked Collection. With each project I'll try and crowbar as many Barenaked Ladies references into the project as physically possible.

You may have noticed my earlier panicked post about an upcoming social event for which I needed to complete two projects in one week, and the appropriate reaction would be to throw your arms in the air and say you're crazy. But hey, this year's event would be different in terms of projects: for the first time I knew what to do...though it was a case of the worst timing I ever knew.

So this is the Pinch Me bag.

I'm happy enough with the final product. I feel fine enough, I guess, considering everything's a mess on the inside*. Still, I don't yet see any problems with the bag. It holds stuff, it's solid and it's waterproof. If it breaks, there's plenty of supplies to fix it.

I drafted the pattern based on the dimensions backpacks and some of the Cath Kitson line to get a gauge for good sizes. It turns out that they varied a lot in capacity.I think mine ends up holding about 35L.

It got towards the end of the make and things weren't matching up. I'm not sure of the geometry involved but the length of the two rectangles didn't equal the perimeter of the bag front. I had to do come serious fudging and take some pleats in the pattern because of time pressure, and I'm hoping it doesn't make the bag look too amateurish.

The lining is also quite messy. I'm not sure why things matched up even less in the lining than they did on the outside, but it's a distinct possibility that I might rip it out and start again. I had high hopes for pockets, loops and things on the inside.

A lot of attention has been paid to the structure of the bag though and at some points I was going through about 8 layers of thick fabric. I'm planning on dragging this bag on flights and trips so it must support <=15kg, plus shocks. The outer is underlined in waterproof/ripstop and then some sort of burlap/sacking fabric. It's very sturdy and will hopefully take some of the stress off the textiles and seams. I had hoped to make the shoulder strap removable, but after looking at the rings and clips available I worry they'd break quite easily.

*I'm sick of the Barenaked puns now.

The second item in the Barenaked Collection will appear all in good time...

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