Bag Four was another altogether different style and type of bag construction for me. I hadn’t done anything with a zip top closure before, and I decided to work the bag out without using drop in lining construction. I snagged a piece of a pattern from here, a part of a pattern from there, and totally failed to understand the relationship between the finished circumference of the facing and the cut length of the gusset.
If you don’t know what a gusset is, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Luckily my friends have patience, and they love getting free bags, so the tweaks I had to do to get the bag to finish out correctly were completely overlooked by everyone but me. I am not really that good at maths, but I do know exactly what kind of finished product I’m looking for, so I have to outthink myself sometimes to get there. And the bag sits comfortably on top of a rollaboard suitcase – or any other suitcase with a pull up handle for that matter. I made this bag for my NFT co-conspirator, the ‘other’ Kim (although it’s hard to know which of us is that one at any moment) – she’s the proud owner of WickedCode.com – we work together on all kinds of projects really.
I am sticking with the wooden feet on all the large bags and totes; I love the look of them and the shapes are organic and individual.
I cut and finish a big batch and then I match them up into sets of four based on their sizes and shapes. No two are ever alike – I literally take a Sharpie marker and scribble some blob looking marks onto the top side of a piece of Baltic birch plywood – although that will eventually become whatever scraps we have handy in the garage, since I’m neither married to Baltic birch, nor interested in standardized bag feet instead of using scraps and recycled bits.
This bag is unique in a few ways, not just the clever cut and resew job I did on the gusset to get it fitting together correctly; the bag – as all of them – is made from a combination of dead stock, short ends, and recycled fabric. See that bright blue on the zip section of the gusset? Let me just say that it looks better on that bag than it did as a pair of not exactly jeans (no offense, RL, I tried to wear them, really, I did!).
The interior is made from drop cloth fabric – an inexpensive “base” that I absolutely love using when I am making collage art and certain bags.
It’s such a great neutral. And you can always find your keys (use the key fob!) or your lipstick or your room key or whatever against the light colored background. It is also a fairly dirt resistant material, so kids and pets and that sort of thing won’t ruin your bag interior straightaway.