A New Travel Bag ~~ #vabeachvacation2015 ~~

Happy Monday morning from sunny Virginia Beach!  After a pleasant day of traveling, we arrived at our beach house with the rest of family waiting our arrival.  This is our 8th summer at this beach and our 5th in the same house. It is comforting to be in the same house. The boys grab their rooms then check out the house to see what has changed.  From there, it’s all beach time! We’re looking forward to a nice week with our family.

Each year I design a new bag specifically for this trip.  Here’s one I made a few  years back.  This is the one I made last year.  This year’s bag was inspired by the exterior fabric, a pattern from Michael Miller called Going Coastal (Bottle Caps in Multi).

The interior fabric is by Sara Lawson (Sew Sweetness) for Art Gallery Fabrics. It’s called Miniature Hills in Terra.  I’m not a fan of orange fabric, but I love this one!   The bag measures about 18″ at the bottom, and about 12″ at the highest point.  The straps and long bottom panel are made from a piece of quilted grey waxed canvas. Nice and tough for my adventures this week (Plus it slid right under the airplane seat with no need to squish it!)

I added pull tabs and rectangle rings on each end for a longer adjustable strap if I need it later on, but left them off for this trip. If you ever have a chance to work with waxed canvas do it!  It’s a wonderful material to sew with and will last forever.

The whole bag and waxed bottom (pardon the toes!) were quilted to add a bit of stability to it.  I didn’t have spare canvas in the studio, so I used old painters canvas I found.  Worked great!!  For the interior of the bag I added a large zippered pocket and 3 slip-in pockets to store extra goodies.

I was able to fit my laptop, magazine, wallet and other assorted travel items in it with room to spare. The shape is a little unusual but it turned out exactly like I had drawn it so I’m pretty happy with it.  I kept notes of the construction as I went along so I hope to turn this into a pattern soon. Just need time to tackle Adobe Illustrator!

Thanks for reading!