She's Done!

So my previous experiments were only partially successful. Fine. I'll deal and I won't bug you with any more futzing around.

 

Moving right along. I finished making my Hiking Bag! I think it's pretty successful but I think I had better bring a needle and thread along just in case any of the stitching starts to come undone. I had to hand-sew a ridiculous amount of this thing. And here she is:

 

For size that's a 750ml (approx 3 c.) water bottle. The fabrics are all my hand-dyed samples from various Spectrum Study Group meetings over the years. The outer one is a "parfait" dye using Procion MX and I backed them all with fusible interfacing. I like the look of the cloudy marbling. All of the straps were recycled from various worn-out backpacks. The interior looks like this:

 

There's a divider with a pocket on the front. The back section holds my iPad in its case/stand leaving the front section free to hold my glasses case, sunscreen, lip balm and keys. Maybe even a small snack. The sides and back are fairly rigid (Timtex again) but also padded with thin fleece. I used a thicker fleece for the water bottle holder and the divider plus the padded area on the strap. This time I got smart and stuck the stiffener and fleece layers together with fusible web (Wonder Under, excellent stuff). In the bottom of each section is a padded and covered piece of Lexan to firm it up.

 

I also got very tricksy and decided to coat the whole outside of the pack with Otter Wax to give it some protection. It was a lot of work (like colouring the whole bag with a huge crayon) but I think it gives it a nice patina and deepens the colours. Don't know how it will hold up in the hot sun though! Better not melt all over my clothes, just sayin'. We'll find out soon enough, won't we?

 

While I was at it and since I had a lot of Otter Wax left I waxed my second-favourite hat:

 

I made this hat years ago with black linen and some jaspe fabric. The linen faded to a purplish-brown. I think the wax gives it a very funky patina which I quite like. It also should shed sprinkles though probably not much of a downpour. I didn't do the jaspe fabric with the wax anyway. Just the linen. It's much darker now though you can still see the brown showing through in places. Both the bag and the hat were finished off with a hot hair dryer and now they are airing to set the wax and hopefully lose the slight smell.

  

There's a shop only 3 blocks away from me that sells the Otter Wax products. It's made in Portland, OR, and has no petroleum products in it. I know I could make something similar but this was easy, if not exactly cheap. I got the large bar which was more economical and still have about 2/3's of it left. I'll let you know how it goes in use. I can re-coat anything again if I need to.     Done sewing. We are in full-on packing and cleaning mode now. Time is flying! I'm getting seriously excited.