This week I’ll be telling you how I made a leather tool bag for my bike – and hopefully it will inspire you to do something of your own too!
I’ve been working on my bike for a little while now, and there’s a certain sort of look I’ve been working to achieve. One day in the near future I’ll post a full article on the whole bike, but until then, I thought I’d share this part with you!
I’ve seen bags similar to this for sale on places like Wish for R600 or more, and as someone who prefers to make things herself, I figured “I can make that”. And so I did!
I had some odd bits of leather in the sewing materials pile, which I thought would do nicely. I decided to make the tool bag in a “drum” or cylindrical form which would save on the number of panels necessary to cut and attach. You’ll be happy to know that I reduced it to just 3 panels – the body and its two sides, which are cut from a circular template in the form of a plastic jam tin lid! The body panel is meant to be “rolled over” to meet itself (not in a philosophical sense!!) where it would be attached. I cut the opening before stitching the panel together. The two side panels were stitched on afterwards. Then I added two straps, each of which would wrap around the bag, fastening with a buckle on the front side. The buckles were small matching ones you can get cheap at any craft shop.
I used hessian string for the stitching, and used a leatherwork needle to do the business. As you can see in the photos I used a large, bold stitch pattern, which I felt would hold the panels firmly together. At the rear of the straps, I stitched on two “D” rings, which I used to attach the bag to my bike.
It was just an evening’s work executed while watching episodes of “Midsomer Murders” with my wiffle and 3 feline companions! Easy-peasy – and it’s useful and looks the part too, don’t you think?
Pictures included – enjoy!
Have a DIY day!
Cheers!
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2021.