Making bags

Although I have stated that I am a die-hard pannier fan at heart, I have taken to frame bags being much better for off road travel.  I have owned a Epic Designs frame bag for about a year, and it really does work well for carrying gear.

I wanted to try something a little custom, as I still have a "unique" feature in mind that I am trying to work out.  For Christmas, my wife and I ventured up to Saskatoon where she is from, and stayed with her mother for 9 days.  Well......  her mother is an accomplished quilter with a few different sewing machines, so we purchased around 10 yards of assorted coated nylons and decided to give it a try.

First, I started by cutting some shapes out of a scrap cotton fabric to make sure we had our patterns figured out right.  As you can see, my trusty friend El Mariachi is my companion that I am making these bags for.

After making sure they fit properly with the proper amount of extra for the seams, I transferred the pattern to the good coated nylon material that I wanted to use.

Cut out all the panels and sides......

And did a little bit of double checking......

I then went to make all the "small parts" for the bag.  Cutting out the panel parts was actually the easy part.  Making all the small straps, reflective piping, zippers and baffles is time consuming and tedious.

I also made a second set of everything while I was set up.   The blue bag is made from a very light, almost waterproof ripstop nylon.  It feels like tent material with a rubberized layer.  The yellow bag is made from the same exact material as kayaking dry bags.  Probably a bit overkill, but the fabric place had it on closeout for $7 a yard.  Cant pass that up, plus it is sturdy enough that it functioned as the pattern too, hence all the writing on the parts.

A few more physical checks to make sure the parts fit the bag and the bag fits the frame.....

And we have two frame bags, ready for sewing.