Laptop bag

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This was my project for today. It’s a messenger-style bag with a pocket under the flap in the front for the power supply. Inside the flap itself is a small zippered pocket for my usb flash drive and anything else small that needs to go in there.

The green outer fabric is a green twill. It was originally bought for a skirt, but it never got made so it worked well for this. The lining is from an old bias-cut skirt I don’t wear anymore. I absolutely love the print, and it matched the twill perfectly.

This was a really difficult bag for me to make. I tried following the messenger bag with gusset tutorial at craftster.org, but couldn’t get the gusset right. That’s when I put it away for the night. This morning I decided to do the sides differently, and it worked a lot better. I strengthened the sides with plastic canvas and quilt batting (two layers of batting, one of canvas for each side). I could have even used another layer of batting, but that’s ok. I didn’t want it to look fluffy, and it doesn’t. I ran a few large basting stitches through the batting and canvas so the batting wouldn’t bunch because I didn’t want to quilt the whole bag.

The hardest part was topstitching the bag with the plastic inside it. The plastic wasn’t in the way, but it was just stiff enough that I had a really hard time getting it around my machine and under the needle. The bag would have been really easy without the plastic.

I also followed the zipper inner bag pocket tutorial here to set in the zipper. It wasn’t as hard as I expected and I absolutely love the results. The zipper is not perfectly straight but for my first try it’s not too bad.

Stephen said I should add some sort of fastener to the flap, but I’m out of ideas. The velcro I tried didn’t stick well, and I can’t fit the bottom of it that far back into my machine to sew anything on with the machine. So for now, I’ll wait.

Closeup of bag with the computer in it. I love how the lining matches the outside fabric so well. You can also see the top of the accessory pocket.

Closeup of the inner zipper pocket

This was quite the challenge, but was a lot of fun. I’m glad I tried it with “stash fabric” first instead of buying fabric for it. There is this REALLY cute coffee fabric at Hobby Lobby though, and that would make a really nice brown and black laptop bag someday, lol!