I am currently sewing an "owlbag", as I have come to call it--not to be confused with an owlbear, though I am a fan of those.
I had the idea for this bag around three in the morning about a month ago. One of my friends has a green bag that she carries her wallet, phone, camera, etc. around in. I decided I wanted a bag for my various belongings that I tend to tote around, and so I designed an owlbag.
Here are my original sketches. The current design is almost exactly the same.
I'm not actually sure of the point at which I decided to make this bag out of old clothing, but that is what I am making it out of. Several years ago at a thrift shop I bought two baggy pairs of pants, one of brown corduroy and the other made of some sort of orange cloth. I think my intention at the time was to use them for renaissance festival costumes, but that never came to be. In addition, I am using a material from a hideous yellow shirt I bought but have never worn. I actually like the pattern, but it is best taken in small doses.
Below are the cloth sample pictures I took in order to construct a colored model in Google SketchUp.
I built a model mainly for the purpose of my own amusement, however I am pretty sure I also used it to figure out some dimensions. Here's the model, skillfully annotated in Photoshop CS5.
Anyway. It's been about a month since I began this adventure. I started December 27th. Below is what I had done by December 31st.
Taking a normal picture was obviously overrated at the time. The green and yellow cloth safety-pinned to the sides is just there to prevent fraying.
I have finally finished the chest feathers, as you can see in the picture below.
It took forever, seeing as I am hand-sewing this entire thing. I had to take two rows out at one point, due to some poor cutting decisions on my part. One of the other problems I had was getting the previous layer to lie flat as I sewed on the next layer. I had been using pins, but pins are like children. They move around no matter how many times you tell them to stay put. Well, I assume children do that. Anyway, I invented this cool technique called basting, only to later learn from my mother that I didn't invent it. I was so proud of myself at the time, that I took a picture of my "clever trick" with my cell phone.
It's getting kind of later here, so I am gonna save the rest of my content for my following entries. Here's a sneak-peek (more for my memory's benefit than anything else).
- ad-hoc measurements
- upside-down mishap
- feet
- shoebox side-project
- hardware
- realization that my fear of sewing machines needs to be overcome
- people's reactions thus far
