Leather, Zippers, Buckles, and Straps--It's Not What You Think

Oh wow, has it really been over four years since my last post to this blog?  I haven't stopped making things, but I have been busy.  As I mentioned in this blog previously, I had been taking a long leave of absence from work just because I needed a break.  At some point I went back to my previous job (surprising many coworkers who thought I'd never come back), and I got back to writing professionally.  As a product manager, I write presentations, white papers, documentation, lots of explanatory emails, and blog entries for a corporate blog, so my general urge to write is pretty well satisfied.

But enough about me...

My most recent project was a leather fanny pack for my older daughter.  Like me, she likes to keep her hands free, so she avoids carrying purses.  She likes leather fanny packs instead.  She has had a couple that worked pretty well for her, but she breaks the zippers on them because she stuffs them too full.  So this time, instead of just buying her a new one (leather fanny packs are not cheap, even if you can find one you like!), I decided to make her one myself.

One of her favorite fanny packs was from Libaire, a company in Berkeley, CA (search libaire.net for fanny pack).  It's a great pack, elegant and well made of unlined sturdy leather, but she overstuffed it and eventually broke the zipper.  Here is the original:

I copied the general design of the Libaire pack with its four zipper pockets, but I modified it, of course.  I made a paper pattern for it that was a bit bigger in all dimensions.  I also planned to add a lining to the main section of the bag that would include a few organizer pockets.  My daughter has a set of stuff she always carries, such as headphones, highlighters, and a small pencil case, so I wanted to tailor the pockets just for her.

For materials I used four sturdy zippers I had salvaged from old jackets and backpacks, along with the remains of the same crocodile-embossed cowhide I used for a previous iPod case.  I had fabric scraps left over from making a slip, so I used those for the lining.  Once I made the pattern and cut out all the pieces for the new pouch and the lining, I had a nice pile of bits.

My mom recently gave me her old industrial sewing machine.  It's a Bernina 217, almost 50 years old, and it can sew through pretty much anything.  It has a heavy-duty clutch motor underneath the table, and the motor stays on, humming, the entire time you are working at the machine.  As I was working on the project, I realized that the sound makes me feel warm and secure--I have a happy association with the humming sound from all the times my mom would work at the machine while I was playing nearby, or in bed, when I was a kid.  

Putting in zippers is one of the early steps in fanny pack construction.  I started by sewing the zippers into their respective panels (front, top, and the two triangular side pockets).

For the side pockets, I discovered that it was important for the little metal clamp at the closed end of the zipper (the top end in the picture above) to be on the same side of the seam as the rest of the zipper (so that there were no zipper teeth or clamp in the seam allowance, only the fabric tape part of the zipper).  When you turn it right side out, you cannot bend the zipper itself, but the tape can bend.  I sewed the polypropylene webbing into the pockets as well at this point.  Here are the zipper pocket pieces before and after turning right side out through the zipper opening.

I sewed the triangle pockets onto the back panel of the pack, making sure the zipper slide was not hanging out in the seam allowance.  The two triangle pockets are connected by the webbing strap at this point.  Once the triangle pockets were sewn on, I could cut off the excess zipper length.

I assembled the lining separately.  I made the pockets to fit specific items she carries.

And then a miracle happened...

Once all the sub-assemblies were assembled, I sewed the whole thing together to the accompaniment of much swearing and a bit of rework.  It seemed like a Moebius bag, and I'm not quite sure how it actually finally went together.  I'll probably have to reverse-engineer it to make another one!  At the very end, I cut the webbing strap and sewed on the buckle and slider.  Here is the finished bag:

 Here is a view of the lining with organizer pockets in the main section:

Here is the fanny pack in use.  Stuffed, of course!

And of course, the obligatory dog shot with Lacey and Tulip:

Tulip figured she'd better make sure there weren't any goodies lurking in the bag.  Something sure smelled interesting in there!

Fabulous Fanny Pack

My daughter and I wanted to make a birthday present for a friend who likes carrying around a book to read, but has lately had trouble with her hands. My daughter suggested a fanny pack might be nice...

My daughter practically had to duck as scraps and salvaged bits of whatnot came flying out of my craft room! That pink Disney Princess backpack that had given a zipper to my yoga bag still had another zipper, buckles, and shoulder straps to give. Another bag donated a black plastic buckle. And of course there was another pair of jeans to recycle!

The Process

We cut off the top part of the jeans and stitched down the zipper fly so it couldn't open.


Probably the hardest part was installing the zipper from the Princess backpack, since the jeans top was still a tube. We had to undo the bottoms of all the belt loops so the zipper seam could go behind them, and we still had all those thick jeans seams to sew through.

We reclosed the belt loops and installed the backpack straps as a "belt" through the back three belt loops while the jeans top was still a tube and easier to handle.

To make the pouch hold more cargo but not stick out so much at the sides, we put small pleats on each side of the fly in front, and on the outer side of each pocket on the back side. We used the blue masking tape to secure the pleats and the front pockets during sewing. The bottom seam was sewn twice along the brown line. We then trimmed to a half-inch seam allowance (trimming off the bottoms of the front pockets) and zigzagged the seam edge.


Results

Here is the finished fanny pack. My daughter did all but the trickiest sewing, and this project certainly has helped improve her machine sewing skills. She also made a lanyard decoration for the back (and learned a new completion stitch from the Boondoggle Man).


The backpack straps are sewn together in the middle of the back, and the whole strap is sewn down. The front of the pack is meant to go against the body so doesn't have the strap.


The following shot shows the zipper opening:


Because we used adult womens' jeans, this fanny pack has some serious book capacity! I could easily get five paperbacks in it. Of course, it also has five functional jeans pockets.


"Honey, does this make my butt look big?"


Yeah, you don't even need to answer that question! Next time I'll have to make one of these out of a little black dress instead of some big baggy jeans! Or maybe bustles will come back in style...