This Haralson is rough-and-ready compared to my first one, of an almost-elegant tapestry. It´s made from a fairly heavy weight canvas — which probably isn´t really a good choice for such a small bag. Turning it right-side-out was interesting, and those ´pleats´ at the bottom aren´t pleats as much as they are rigid corners.
Photo of a brown canvas belt bag with dark brass
hardware and a brown webbing strap. The bag´s
flap is decorated with a green/yellow/red and white
embroidered patch depicting a large moth.
But I wanted a much more casual bag, too, so this is what I went for, and it all worked out well in the end. Not to mention that I had the canvas in stash, which counts for so much!
There isn´t a lot to add to my original comments from the previous post. This is a basically a well-designed bag, and, as it turns out, I love the size: It´s a perfect Goldilocks every day bag — not too big and not too small.
I used a much lighter interfacing for this bag, in deference to the heavy weight of the canvas, and a different lining for this. The lining is a soft green and has a crushed texture which is rather fun, but it´s quite sturdy and should survive hard use.
Photo of the sage green lining in a brown canvas bag. The lining is
textured with heat-set pleats, and there are three pockets in the
front of the bag, two sized for small notebooks with a pen
pocket between. The upper edge of the pockets is bound in
sage green grosgrain ribbon.
As for the tapestry bag, I added pockets to the inside of the front panel. I winged it this time, which was probably a mistake. They´re a bit sloppy, but no one else will ever know, right?
It´s really helpful to have these additional pockets, since the inner zipper pocket is really too small to be useful for most of the items I usually carry.
There are other three bits of customization I do to almost every bag I make. The first is a zipper garage. This is a triangle of fabric into which the zipper pull can be tucked so that the metal doesn´t catch on clothing when the bag is worn.
Photo of the upper back of a canvas Haralson bag showing an
externa lzipper. The metal zipper pull is hidden beneath
a triangular piece of canvas. A black chord zipper pull is
visible peeking out from the zipper ´garage´.
Secondly, I also add a cord zipper pull to the head of the zipper. Even a really tiny one like the one above is too big to go through the hold at the end of the metal pull, but it can be threaded through the larger opening nearer the zipper. A cord pull makes using a zipper so much easier!
Photo showing the front of an unassembled brown canvas
Haralson bag. The lower front piece is basted to the interior
lining piece. Loops of thin black cord show on either side of the
bag; these are the outer edges of larger loops which are inside
the bag and will be sewn in place once the bag is assembled.
And, third, I always add cord loops to the inside of my bags so that I can clip small things into the bag. The Haralson has an open top under the flap, which makes this even more important for me. This photo isn´t the best for showing the loops, since it´s taken of the exterior of the bag before assembly, but the cords at each side form loops inside the bag.
As a side note, I kind of love the three part construction of the Haralson. You make the full-length back lining/exterior piece, the lower front piece, and the full-length front lining/interior piece, and then sandwich them together. Each piece feels complete in itself before assembly, which is oddly satisfying.
This time I used the hardware most likely to be found in a brick and mortar store. (It may be from Dritz?), and made a very unpleasant discovery: The tiny hinge in the back of the clip pinches a finger very neatly. Every. Single. Time.
Photo of a dark brass clip attached to webbing on the front
of a Haralson bag. A small portion of a colorful embroidered
patch can be seen to the right. Faint rectangular lines show at the
bottom of the clip where the metal loop threads through the
brown webbing. The left edge of the rectangular cutout is hinged,
and pinches when the clip is opened and closed.
This is an awful design, and I knew I was going to hate the clip every time I used the bag. Grrr.
Mr. Noile took one look, and cleverly suggested a plastic sleeve. Since ´stash´ in this house includes enough stuff to stock a small hardware store, I had clear plastic tubing in several sizes in the basement. I trimmed a medium diameter piece to fit, slashed it to grab at the base of the offending hinge, and, voila, problem solved!
The brown canvas made what is probably the world´s most boring bag, so I was very, very happy that I had this marvelous moth patch, which fit perfectly once I moved it down onto the clip webbing.
My Haralson duo is ready for anything — but I think I need just one more. Next time it will be red Cordura, because now that I´ve got ´elegant´ and ´rough-and-ready´ I need ´flash´!