My projects,  Sewing

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.

Image: Red bag open

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.

Image: Inside of the red bag

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.

Image: The red bag, front view.

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.

Thank you for visiting my blog and see you soon! Don’t forget to subscribe to get notified on my future posts! Happy sewing!

I am a mother of two. I sew, knit and create and blog about it.

2 Comments

    • kk

      I might if lots of people want it! Anyway, I did not know whether the bag was going to be any good so I did not take any pics while I was doing it. I was too lazy to even draw a pattern! However, my daughter would like a similar bag so I may have to make another at some point.

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