messenger bag

remember those buttons i made a while back? well, they have finally been applied to this messenger bag that i made for my friend sarah. a large part of the (laughably long) delay on this project was finding a supplier for the metal strap hardware. most online suppliers require minimum orders in the hundreds as they are set up to work with producers, while most fabric stores, even nice ones like stonemountain and britex have very limited, very overpriced and somewhat sad selections. the solution was a retailer out of oregon called strapworks. still, that only got me the brass slides.

i ended up fabricating this little hook out of a scrap of sheet brass. it acts as a quick connector for the secondary strap that keeps the bag on your back when riding a bike.

more, including pictures of a cat, below!

one of sarah's two awesome cats, sister, found the whole thing rather intriguing and, after sniffing around a bit, decided the open bag would be the perfect spot to sit and lick her privates.

the fabrics, a heavy natural canvas and a slightly lighter weight colorgrown striped number, as well as the thread, are organics sourced from nearsea naturals. (if you haven't heard of colorgrown, you should check it out: it is weaved purely from different colors of cotton. shades of off white, green and brown are all used. nearsea carries a bunch.) the webbing is just from the fabirc store.

i'm expecting to have to make a few adjustments before the bag works really well for sarah. for example, i left the straps very long so they could be adjusted down as sarah finds her preferences. after her first ride with it, i got the following text:

'bag test number one: awesome. just needs some way of securing the secondary strap when i'm just  walking around and don't need it.'