Red bag for my son

My son has been frustrated with his lack of a proper bag to carry his essentials around. His school bag is too big and bulky if he just wants to take his wallet and phone to visit a game shop or to buy some ice cream. Lately I haven’t made that many things for my son, so I promised to help and make him a boyish red bag.

I found this sturdy plastic-backed canvas and the black strap at a local fabric shop called Inkuri. After getting hom, I immediately started cutting the canvas. Without making a proper pattern, I just determined a suitable width to the bag and started cutting rectangular strips of fabric.

I made the front and the back out of rectangles with rounded bottom corners. The sides and the back came out of a long strip of fabric and I made matching pipings to add some extra to the seams. Pockets are always important to have, so I made three compartment pocket to the fromt of the back and a one simple wide pocket to the inside of the bag.

The inside seams looked ugly so I covered them with some blue bias tape. Red or black would have suited better but I did not have enough of those colours in storage and I had to settle with the blue one.

I decided to use an old metal zipper that I had recycled from an old skirt to make a useful zippered pocket on the front flap.  The zipper was super long so I had to shorten it a lot. I have never shortened a metallic zipper before but I knew it could be done. I secured the end of the right length with some zigzag stitching and cut the zipper about 2 cm after my secure stitching. After some work with the pliers (btw. cutting pliers were really handy in loosening the zipper teeth) the extra teeth came of and I had a perfect zipper for my bag! I covered the ends with little pieces of canvas and stitched the whole thing onto the front flap.

Then it was only a matter of stitching both sides of the flap together, some topstitching and sewing the flap in place. Oh, and the strap. I determined the right length with the help of my son, so I did not have to make an adjustable strap. To make sure that the strap would stay on I attached an extra piece of canvas to the wrong side of the bag’s side panels before stitching the straps securely on.

Both me and my son like this bag a lot. I think this red bag is certainly the best I have ever made and it suits my son very well.

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