Bag: (fake) Pig (skin) in the City

from josh the sewer

I did it. I made a bag and it isn't too girly. When the Sewist and I started (well, mostly the Sewist) making her mother’s bag, I also cut out the pieces for my own bag attempt and sat it I aside until I had some time to put toward it.

Earlier this summer when we were looking around the Mill End Store, I noticed a bolt of pleather football upholstery and thought it would look kind of cool (almost made pants, but that would not work too well and, really, I ain’t the type for those kind of duds).

A month later I found the Moda “Varsity” fabric in the 50 percent off rack at Fabric Depot. (Already this bag is off to a weird start, I really don’t like either place that well, and don’t get me started on the Porta-Potty situation at Fabric Depot, errrrrrr. Oh, and I don’t like football that well either).

Since the football stuff is really thick, I did not use the canvas in any part of the construction except for the side panels. Like the Sewist’s bags, I left off the tab. I used white thread to contrast with the pleather and only topstitched the strap, which I also sewed a couple times to the main bag for reinforcement. I always end up carrying heavy stuff when I bother actually carrying stuff at all, so it makes sense to make it extra durable. The other change I made was to the tool pocket were I cut down on the pencil and pen holders and went with a spot to put a cell phone and a place for the iPod Nano I don’t have.

I also learned that, like everything else I sew, the seam ripper is my best friend. Which sucks. I would really like to sew something without picking something out over and over again. The strap, in particular, became intimately acquainted with my seam ripper. A word to anyone thinking about making this out of pleather: it's a tremendous pain to make the strap. If you try to iron it, it'll melt. So, first I tried basting it down, which didn't work. Then I tried gluing it, which didn't work. Finally, I glued it, then stacked books on top of the strap to hold the glued sides together, holding it in place for 24 hours. Which worked really well, until I forgot to check how much thread was left in the machine's bobbin. So, I "sewed" most of the strap without a bobbin. Back to the seam ripper (because even though there was no bobbin thread, the top stitches stuck). Finally, after try number 172, I sewed the damn thing together. And it looked pretty good.


Despite all of the excitement in constructing the strap, I enjoyed putting the thing together. The pleather wasn’t that bad to work with, it rolled a little, but was manageable. Now that I am done, I am not sure I like it enough to carry around, partly because the pleather is eerily soft and I don’t actually go to that many places that I actually need to haul enough stuff to warrant carrying a bag…