Finally… the last part of ‘The Darkside” bag creation journey… the sewing!

So the pattern I chose was the Triple Zip by SewDaKine. It’s cute and classy and a good size. Before starting, I usually lay out fabrics and pick which ones I would like to use. For this make, the woven fabric is the highlight, and I made enough cloth for two of the three front panels. Black cork looked excellent as the exterior accent and is a great, hard-wearing, naturally sourced material. A cotton print lining will work just fine.

Since there are three prominent zippers, those had to be chosen too. There are so many options for fabric, zipper tape colour, zipper & hardware metal colour… it usually takes a good half hour just to play around to find what works.

Once the fabric is selected, it all gets cut as per the pattern and interfacing is applied to all pieces (except the cork). Interfacing is a second layer of plain fabric that gets fused (ironed) onto the back of fabric to give it additional strength and structure. Interfacing on the back side of a handwoven fabric is really important, as it will help to stop any fraying at the fabric edges, and gives really nice stiffness and strength to the woven cloth. I also always zig zag stitch the hand woven cloth edges to ensure nothing frays or shifts. Cutting and interfacing usually takes a couple of hours.

Now it’s time to sew! Since i’m getting better at sewing, I decided to use a contrasting topstitch thread to make the bag pop a bit more. White thread on a black cork background. This pattern was an easy sew, but after sewing this bag once and having the strap fail on a customer, I decided to up the ante on the strap attachment.

Here are the strap attachment iterations I have tried so far:

1. Followed the pattern - only about 1/2” of the bottom of the strap connector is sewn in at the seam where the back panel and top zipper meet. This isn’t strong enough and ripped out.

2. Made longer strap connectors, sewed in at the seam where the back panel and top zipper meet, plus riveted further down the bag. This one seemed a lot sturdier, if I had to make the bag again I would probably modify this option again and sew/rivet even further.

3. Made a strap that encompasses the entire bag bottom and sewed it along the main bag seam. This was really tricky to sew in, and while I think it’s the sturdiest option, I wouldn’t do this one again.

So, yeah! After all that work, it’s finished. ‘The Darkside’. I like it, finally made the strap connectors work, but I don’t think I’ll make this bag again…. 4 times is enough!