New tech – old fabric

I love travelling. I love preparing for trips. I probably spend more time researching compression socks for long flights, hammams for a stopover in Istanbul or cameras that are not only affordable, but will work for taking photos on holiday as well as in the flat, for shooting the latest piece of fabric I’ve just snapped up, than actually on said holidays.

After an epic 4 month research, review reading, Youtube watching, saving, and a fair amount of dreaming, I finally updated my 7 years old laptop. In laptop years that is exactly a hundred, but the veteran still stays in the family. The new kid is currently being tested, I love new technology, but I’m also quite suspicious, so the box it came in will be part of the furniture for another 12 days…

In the meantime, I decided to make a little case for it, so that I can take it outside and see exactly how mobile the two of us are.

You must be tired of this fabric by now, this is the same I used for the Bangkok bag and the camera case too. It is a waxed cotton from Nigeria: easy to sew, easy to iron and pretty durable. I have 6 meters of it, so once I run out of gadgets to cover, I might even make a dress for myself. 🙂

I have used up pretty much all the remnants of the military jacket’s lining to line the case, with some batting sandwiched between the layers for extra padding. The edges are bias bound, and some elastic is sewn at the back to hold some magazines, or paper…although given the fact that there is a pen that works wonderfully with the laptop/tablet (no notepad necessary), and having Pinterest and the whole of the internet with all the information and photos available I could possibly need, I don’t see why I would be carrying a 200 page magazine with 150 pages of adverts with me. Oh the design-fails we make… 🙂

The Barcelona Bag

Please welcome the Barcelona Bag. This is the last in my unintentional travel (and other) bag series. 🙂

As you know already, I’ve spent a few days in the Spanish capital recently. I knew I would be taking one of my other backpacks as my carry on luggage, but last time I was sight-seeing in Marseille, I realized that carrying a shoulder bag is just a pain in the (quite literally) back. So I came up with the idea of using up the leftover leather from Morocco that I used for that Berlin Bag, and making a small backpack, that can be turned into a regular bucket bag.

I did not take pictures of it acting like a bucket bag, so you will have to take my word for it, but on the picture below you can kind of see how it works. There are two clamps at the bottom of the bag that click onto the rings on the one long strap to turn it into a backpack.

I have lined it with the same material I used for the Bangkok Bag and the camera cover, and put in a zippered pocket which turned out beautifully this time.

I used double cap rivets for the first time, and while it was pretty easy to insert them, 2 fell out in the middle of the trip. If anyone knows a surefire way of inserting them, please do let me know, as I’m not sure if it was me, or if they were too small to start with, or simply the quality is not what I was after…

The design of the bag was kind of random, as I just tried to use as much of the leather I had as possible. I had to buy some leather scraps from one of my favorite fabric shops in Brixton for £5/piece. The front pocket is made of one of those pieces and was left raw on the edges. Unfortunately it did not stay closed, so I had to superglue a magnetic closure thing on it. It’s not exactly how I imagined, but it works. All in all, I’m in looove with the bag! 🙂

DIY fur bag

For a person who gets by with a single bag for everyday occasions, I have been extremely busy sewing all kinds of bags lately (the ones for Berlin & Bangkok). And it’s not over yet, but not to worry, there are only two more left to show you…

So, what we have here is my party bag. If you know me in person you are now thinking: what party do you go to exactly? Well, I guess I would call a wild Saturday night a success, if I managed to stay up until 3AM  in the morning and finished something I have started sewing at the time. But jokes aside (I’m not even kidding, though 🙂 ), I may not go out all dressed up that much, but this furry little thing works well when I intend to dress something up too.

You may recognize the faux fur from my military jacket, as it is made from the leftover fabric that I used for the collar. One day when I accidentally purchased some more fabric that I already did not need (obvs.), I decided to make space for them by doing some scrap busting.

I took the chain from an old bag, and used the remaining fabric from my birthday dress as a lining. The bag is really tiny, but it can hold my “party essentials”, so I am really quite happy for it’s existence! 😉

The Bangkok Bag

Like I mentioned before, we went on our very first backpacking trip with my sister to South East Asia. It was not backpacking in it’s traditional meaning as we stayed in the nicest hotels we could afford and had our whole 3 weeks planned out, but all our luggage consisted of a smallish backpack (well, one for me and one for her of course).

Since the Berlin bag is quite heavy without any load, I had to look for another one. I looked online for a nice and practical one, but for some reason this combo is not popular in my price range: you can either get one that’s useful or one that’s pretty. I have already made a backpack earlier this year, so I didn’t see a reason why I could not give it a go again. Please welcome the Bangkok bag! 🙂

I must have spent the same amount of time researching backpacks again, now looking for some lightweight options as well as checking the details that make a bag sturdy. Since I’ve spent so much time on trying to find new solutions, while sewing bikinis and dresses for the trip, I decided to stick with the same shape that I chose for the Berlin bag.

I used the black cotton drill for the main body that was meant to be used for the Berlin bag; the gold fabric on top and the lining are leftovers from the military jacket’s lining, and the tie-dye fabric is an African waxprint cotton that my Dad brought from Nigeria years ago. I bought some D-rings and reused some from an old bag, so I managed to only spend about £3 on this bag in total.

The only new function on the backpack is the outside pocket on the back panel. Unfortunately the zip broke, but it would have been a great solution for keeping money safe during those hours spent on airports, trying to catch some sleep between the flights.

I made a silly mistake and sewed the closing strap to the bag the wrong way around, but I will have to remove that black webbing that goes across it anyway, as it is not long enough to go from edge to edge. By the way, this is why the stitching came loose on one of the straps on day 4. Not cool. Even though the bag only weighed about 9 kilos by the end of the trip, I had to be very careful with putting it on and taking it off to avoid having to carry my stuff around in a plastic bag. 🙂

I also made a cover for my first DSLR from the same material. I could not fit a full camera bag into the backpack, so I decided to copy this brilliant idea I’ve found on Pinterest. It was a last minute make, so it’s a bit wonky, but it does the job!

I think my favourite thing about sewing must be knowing that I can fix most things. Knowing how the pieces go together and become something functional, and if something needs to be changed not being afraid to take it apart and put it back together – better.

After carrying the bag around Asia for 3 weeks I now know that I can make something pretty (if I say so) and useful. I also know that it has some flaws, but (luckily) I also know how to fix them.

The Berlin Bag

I made a bag guys! This is the first non-clothing item I’ve made that’s actually super useful and looks pretty much as I imagined it.

We planned a trip to Berlin with some friends (and my sis, of course), with the flight arriving at 9am and a check in time at 2pm. Since I didn’t feel like carrying my stuff around in my hand all day, I decided to make a backpack. And the endless research for the perfect backpack started. I already had a Pinterest board for bag ideas, but this time I focused on roll top backpacks. I wanted something that’s stylish, simple and expandable.

HHI Day Pack

Voyatzer backpack

The problem with the ones for sale, apart from being overpriced, is that they tend to be more on trend and less functional in my eyes. Most of them have the vintage looking buckle fastening (which is just a hassle to open/close) and the sleek looking, unpadded leather/canvas straps don’t look comfortable to me at all. After spending hours looking at the DIY options, the handmade ones on Etsy, and pretty much every vintage looking/cycling rucksack on Pinterest, I found that  the HHI Day Pack and the Voyatzer Backpack bags that seemed to be the closest to what I had in mind.

The bag’s top can be folded or rolled down. I thought a lot about how to close the sides under the flap, and I am more than happy with the solution, as I didn’t want to insert a zipper and I didn’t really trust putting a button there.

The leather cover on the bottom was made of a piece of leather that I scored for about £4 in Fes, Morocco last year. I bought some black cotton drill to do the top bit, but since it was a different shade of black, I got the chevron patterned wool instead. I’ve checked the measurements of other similar bags and measured my torso length before I cut the fabric out. In the construction of the straps and the back panel, this tutorial proved to be very helpful (it’s a somewhat unusual source, I don’t quite want to know what the guns are for…). I got my hardware from this eBay shop, and all I regret is not getting more at the same time (so that I can make more bags! 🙂 ).

Pretty much everything went smoothly except for one thing. My machine can’t sew more than 2 layers of leather. There were parts on this bag where I had to attach 3 layers of leather, 2 layers of wool, and 2 layers of the lining fabric. It was not fun. It took me about 4 hours to do it by rolling the machine by hand…but it’s done!! Ever since then my sewing machine runs a little weird, so I’m thinking about getting a half industrial vintage one, or something more heavy weight as a replacement in the not so near future. If you have any suggestions on what machine to get next, I’m all ears!

All in all, I am pretty much in love with my little “Berlin Bag”. If it wasn’t as heavy as it is, I would definitely take it to the South East Asia trip too, but since it is, I must make another one. So watch this space! 🙂