Day Bag

This is day bag I'm making for the trip Rachael and I are planning through Turkey and Syria.  I'm using the core of a bag I started making in Boston, but never finished. Mostly I plan to use this to carry around my sketch book, pencils and daily essentials.  It's cut to the format sketch book I plan to make for the trip.  You can see I quilted a divider that runs down the center of the inside of the bag (foam between canvass).  This will serve to give shape and also allow to whole bag to become a cushion to sit on while drawing. In the past I've sat for hours (sometimes days) or cold or wet or very hot stone working on a drawing (see older post of Sultanahmet Camii in Istanbul - very painful to sit there doing that.).

 The core is made from canvass. Most of it salvaged from the cushions from an Ikea couch that belonged to my bother that were given to me by my Mother who pulled them off a curb in Chicago - my brother was going to toss them.  She brought them to me in Boston when she visited. It all double thick and double stitched.

I've going to sew the checked cotton into a shell over the core.  The leather straps come from my highschool back pack that my mother bought for me second-hand from a army surplus store in MPLS when I was 16 - that bag lasted about ten years of repairs and patches and died in Boston.

One last feature - you'll see the core has flared sides.  I plan to put a button on each side to allow the side to be folded in to make to bag smaller when needed.