Let me explain – I walk to work most mornings and when I leave home I’m usually carrying a lot of stuff. I have my notebooks for work, pens, some form of trashy reading material, often an umbrella, my wallet, keys, my makeup bag (which sadly seems to be getting bigger as I get older), my music (thank God for ipods!) and sometimes my drawing pencils and sketch book. Now to be honest I do sometimes use my knapsack – especially when I’m carting my laptop around. Problem is - it’s big and bulky – it’s not great on public transit and when you go into a store the shop clerks watch you like a hawk – not that I blame them having worked in retail all through university. So I set out to find a messenger bag that would hold all my stuff, comfortably go over my shoulder to distribute the weight and that would look funky but still be functional.
Do you think I could find what I was looking for? No. The bags I saw that were big enough weren’t designed with a shoulder strap. Those that did have a strap could barely hold my cell phone and a lipstick… and a lot of them looked like something my Nana would carry to pick up a few things at the grocery store. The more I looked the more frustrated I got. Everywhere I went I looked, dragging whoever I was with into store after store – getting sourer as time went by.
That’s when my Mom – practical Brit that she is – suggested that I should just make one. “I taught you to sew when you were 12” she said “and you have my old sewing machine so get off you’re a---, do it yourself and stop whining.” If there was ever a moment of perfect clarity – it was that one. If I could imagine it – I could sew it – kinda like Field of Dreams but without the baseball diamond and corn fields.
But where to start? I took off to the fabric store and went through all of their pattern books and realized that even there they didn’t have what I was looking for, but I couldn’t let that stop me – I had had an epiphany and by all that’s crafty it would not be put asunder – OK I’ll back away from the mellow drama now…
Anyway - I did what any self respecting crafter would do – went to Goodwill – found a bag that was similar to what I was wanting and took it apart. With a few modifications, a meter of denim, a fair amount of swearing, my Gemagic, embroidery floss and fabric paint… I finally had the perfect messenger bag – one that would hold all my stuff – including my laptop - still look funky and feel comfy while it did.
Since then I’ve made quite a few… here are a couple… The first one I made using my basic pattern and then jazzed it up with my Gemagic… The second was one that I made for a friend using flowers I cut from the Lei she handed out at a party last summer.