How the ‘Organic Coffee Sling Bag’ came to be

These coffee sacks were found by chance and I fell in love with them. I did not know what I was going to do with them….but I could not leave them there so I bought a selection. Two days later I went back for the rest. They were too gorgeous to leave any behind …

Then, as per usual, for days I thought about what kind of bag these sacks wanted to be …and it seemed as though this design did not want to wait. At the same time I was busy with an environmental competition with the CPUT students and Hemporium was one of the sponsors. They provided some organic Hemp canvas swatches for the students to see what the fabric was like so that they could design their products accordingly. After seeing and feeling this fabric (which I thought was beautiful) I had a ‘Eureka’ moment: Why not use the hemp canvas together with the coffee sacks? When I got home I put the two textures together and they were a match made in heaven.

I always start a new design by drawing a selection of bag designs in my journal. Then I select a few and play around with the fabric to see how it moves and how it hangs. The final design for this bag came rather quickly and I pinned it together to get the full effect.

Then I worked out the pattern pieces for the bag. This process always takes me a long time as I have to give it 100% focus all the way through. I am not a natural at working out how the pieces will fit together and I often have to ‘build’ the bag in my head. I cannot be disturbed doing this or I have to start all over again.

Once this is done I create the pattern pieces. I use newspaper because if I make a mistake with the pattern, it is not a costly mistake.

After this I make my first sample. I still have not learnt yet from my mistakes as everytime I tell myself, “agh, you have the pattern right this time, you do not need to use cheaper fabric. Use the real fabric. I am sure it will be perfect”.

As expected, it was not.

Luckily only a few changes needed to be made and I made these on the proper card pattern pieces: the overall size of the bag was too big, the strap was a little bit too long, I added an extra pocket inside the bag and changed the tuck sizes. Otherwise, the whole bag was the quickest I have ever made anything from start to finish.

The Organic Coffee Sling Bag is my favourite bag. This goes to show that sometimes the best things happen by chance.