8.1 Evolution of a Camera Bag

Welcome back to the home sewing front!

This weekend, after the podcast, I was so tempted to playing a video game – not related to the mario project. I started to, but then didn’t enjoy it, so I got out some of my sewing stuff. I had my personal September Sunday Sew-In in my office, which was fantastic!

Sunday my nagging “product quilting mind” started getting after me, prodding me to lunge after my UFOs.

Last June, of 2009, I created this monstrosity for a camera bag.

I wore it to the local quilt guild show (before I was a member) and I was proud of it, but yet despised it at the same time. 

I sorta showed it off, but I kept trying to get sympathy from others, wishing they were saying “It’s not that bad, really.”

Instead I kept getting suggestions on how to make it better.

Problems with the bag. 

1. Camera is too loose in the bag. The bag is too big.
2. Unattractive bare elastic.
3. Liner showing through on the sides.
4. The straps are not evenly sewed down.
5. The strap is too long.
6. The strap sticks out in between my fabric and my lining.
7. The strap has unevenly sewed zig zag stitch along the sides in addition to the straight stitch which makes it look just silly.
8. The fabric, which was meant to be ‘fun & hip’ was described as ‘gross psychedelic flowery junk’.

A few months ago (I think memorial day weekend?), I created this little sharp, modern, clean looking bag.

Which has no straps, but I didn’t have my camera at the time of creating it, and failed to figure about how wide my camera really is.  So when you go to close it, you get this following picture (taken w/ the phone camera – low quality)

As you may be able to tell, the lid does not stay closed.  I was going to use black velcro on this, but with it being so short, it wasn’t going to work at all.

What I ended up doing most of the time was putting the camera in this black bag and putting both the camera and the camera bag into the larger flower fabric camera bag because it had straps. 

This made no sense.  But I lived with it.

In August our quilt guild had a meeting, where the speaker was a local quilting teacher who helped us create a sewing carryall.  This used a different technique altogether with separate pockets instead of folding over one edge.

This really is a nice idea except you really don’t see the ‘fantastic fabric’ until you open it up.  This project was wonderful and if I didn’t have a clear plastic case (with a zipper) as a sewing carryall, I would really be loving and using this more. 

A few other issues.

• You can’t see it, but the top two pockets are divided by three sewing lines.  This would be fine for the bottom pocket, but I should have only put the middle sewing line on the middle pocket.
• The bottom pocket was too tall to handle anything small (needles, seam ripper, washable glue) well
•  No batting or fleece in the middle and back pockets.

However, it sparked some ideas.  What if I put an accent fabric right on the edge of the pockets?  What if I varied the pocket size and colors a little bit more?  What if I gave my strap ide another chance?  A month ago I wrote down some of my ideas on how to make this carryall better.

And so this weekend, when I was looking wistfully at my original, unsatisfying camera bag, and then staring at my fabrics, I got out my seam ripper and was about to start ripping on the zig zag, but then decided to make something different instead. I started thinking about redoing the camera bag from scratch.

I melded the idea for the straps from the original camera bag, and the idea for taking a different fabric for the pockets from the sewing carryall, and my experience from making my tote bag, in addition to some blog post I saw about making a camera bag with a lens cap pocket, and created this on Sunday.

There is an extra pocket on the back (was intended for the front, but when turning the project inside out it ended up on the back and I am happy with it, so it’s staying on the back.

One more picture showing the lining fabric.

What’s cool and new about my new camera bag?

• Cool, sleek, thin, good looking strap, with fusible fleece imbedded in the strap for weight.
• Two pockets, one for the camera, one for 4 batteries.  Unfortunately, I need this because the rechargeable batteries I tend to use do lose charge easily.
• Trim on the pockets of different fabrics.
• Rings I cut off of a handbag I bought from goodwill last year.
• The top ring serves no purpose in closing the bag, but it v heft enough to keep the bag closed on its own.
• Tabs created for the ring tab are sewn into the bag itself.  Sleek.
• Colors go well together.
• My camera fits in it well!

This time, when I carry my camera bag, I hope to get some great comments about how good the bag looks and works.  Looking forward to showing it off at work too!