The Idea
My idea to make a bag, stemmed from my need for a smaller every day carry. I have a larger laptop bag that I continue to use, but on the occasions where I only needed to bring my tablet or a smaller book, the bag felt too big. So I decided to make a smaller version for when I was on the go with smaller items.
I lined the entire thing in waterproof canvas to further protect the contents of the bag. A shoulder strap to carry the bag and some Sam Browne buttons to hold things closed. It was my first major project and taught me a lot about how to work leather.
The Pattern
I have changed the pattern for the messenger bags that I make over the years. Some of the changes have been purely aesthetic, while others have added structural integrity and made the crafting easier as I have become more experienced designing patterns and following them.
The change that best reflects my growth from the first bag that I made to my most recent pattern is the gusset. When I made my first bag, I had a bottom piece and two sides. While it did work, it added a lot of stitching and two extra possible points of failure. On the pattern that I designed most recently, I made the bottom and sides out of one piece, called a gusset.
