Bag Completed!
It’s not really a postal bag. It’s a raw leather satchel.
I didn’t expect it to be this nice. I’ve surprised myself.
I hand-sewed the leather strap to the sides with three parallel lines double-stitched. Notice the roughness of the leather edges. Good belts have the leather trimmed/rounded rather than a straight cut. My cutting isn’t so refined. It does mean that there is a bit of molting flakes of suede, especially the strap.
The inside isn’t lined… it’s a hard leather bucket. There are no seams on the back, the body is a single piece of leather.
Here you can see my amateur hand-stitching. This was my first seam, and it was before I purchased the stitching wheel.
For scale, you can see the 15″ Macbook Pro fits easily. With a neoprene cover it can be thrown in with everything else.
I found an awesome brass buckle which is stitched to the lower corner of the bag. I also used copper rivets for attaching the tongue to the flap. My first time using rivets… they’re awesome. I want to bedazzle everything I own with copper rivets. Hah. I actually went through three different constructions of the tongue and buckle. I almost used rivets to attach the buckle to the bag body, but when prototyping how it would actually work I realised that the rivets would make it more difficult for the tongue to go through the buckle. I’ve actually owned bags where this was a design fault.
I couldn’t be happier with this bag! It’s going to be great to see it stain and discolour with wear over time.
The only improvements I will make for the next version will be to make a more flexible strap attachment which allows articulation… and probably use a different type of belt which isn’t leather.
Tags: Postal Bag, Raw Leather, Satchel