Taylor Tailor Desmond Backpack, a masterpiece after much planning!

 After years planning this backpack it was December and my make 12 for the year was down to 2 things: a backpack and a Kalle top.  Add to that selling my house and an upcoming move...I knew I needed to buckle down for a last few important makes before my head scattered and my stuff was packed away (and turned into a total catastrophic mess, but that was later...)

I had accrued a total of 8 types of webbing.  8! types of webbing!  Because I needed the Just Right match, webbing, you will agree, makes this backpack.  Nothing was ever just right, until finally the vision had coalesced and the right option was there.  I had bought green and cream cotton webbing, cotton magenta webbing with silver in it, grey nylon webbing, I forget the others now...and then at David's one day when visiting Hamilton I saw this webbing, a dark maroon nylon webbing with a subtle pattern in it. YES!

The silver bits are from MacPherson's in Seattle which is always a fun little bike ride.  However it's proof of how long ago I bought them...I don't have a bicycle in Seattle anymore (parents complained about it taking up space) so it must have been when I was visiting circa 2017.  That means these bits which are quite heavy have travelled a lot ways with me!  I've moved about 6 times since 2017...

The fabric is maroon cotton oilskin, I think it's Merchant and Mills, and I bought it from Miss Maude.  Only about 2 years ago!  

Then I was totally stumped regarding linings.  I was stumped about linings basically all year this year.  It was only as the year came to a close that I felt a certain pressure to just Do the Thing!  I went to Spotlight and bought a fabric to match.  It is, yet again, perfect, showing that sometimes waiting for a project to come together is worth it. 

During my many years of thinking, plus the actual reflecting on the pattern over the two weeks before I made it, I focused on 2 major changes.  Front pocket needed to be bigger, and the side pockets for the waterbottles needed to be bigger.  I had this very complicated vision for the side pockets including accordioning the bottom with a pleat, adding a front grommet and a pull so that you could snug the top of the pocket shut...

Then I watched this video.  

I figured out that I could increase the size of the main pocket by only increasing the outsides along the dart edges - so the pocket pieces were unchanged on top in terms of how the pocket would sit on the pack, but all the edges would be longer.  

And finally I had some waterproof oilskin liner left over after using it for my Merchant and Mills Field belt.  This was just randomly lying around but when I realised I had enough, it was genius! 

I sallied forth and underlined the entire pack in the oilskin liner, and used the lining separately which I block fused.  The front pocket and waterbottle pockets also are underlined.  It means the inside of the pack and the inside of the pocket are impervious to rain (which has been the case.)  This did make it harder to sew.  Oh, and it was like 28 degrees in the sewing room, which means actually the oilskin itself was melting.  

In order to make this project happen I proclaimed to some of my work colleagues that I would be making it the next day so they would hold me to task.  I cut it out that night and sewed for an intense chunk of time the following day, getting the backpack to the point of starting the lining, then I went to a work party and was able to show evidence that I had made some pretty good inroads into the thing.

Everything including the lining and finishing was the following day.  So basically this was about 2 days of pretty intense sewing.  

I used the youtube tutorial for my side pockets, realising it was a WAY better idea that messing around with grommets or extra bits.  My pockets were wide enough and high enough to fit a Swell bottle, which I used for measuring.  I pleated the bottoms of the pockets to fit in the allocated space.  My elastic is a super heavy stuff, was a bit tricky when folding over on the edges, but I managed.  When my sewing machine just couldn't deal I switched over to the Bernina and that was really amazing.  Most of the project was managed by the little Pfaff, but it just hates anything heavy duty so it was perfect to have a back up machine that didn't baulk at those parts.  I did also wield the hammer to flatten my seams since I wasn't ironing the oilskin.

Extra details on the main pocket are for bicycle safety - a hook for a light and a reflective strip.  I wanted to add some details but not too many.  The patch is from Klum House and it was random luck how well it matched!  

I ditched all the inner pockets, just putting one zipper inner pocket and not against the back, where its contents are very irritating, but on the other side.  YAY win for DIY.  The only thing I knew I would miss (and I do) is a panel against the back to add structure.  You could simply add a full height pocket then put a piece of foam or a notebook in there and voila, it would be much less crumply.  I'm tolerating it ok but that would have been the one thing I added if I made this again.  I just couldn't quite figure out how, and it was one thing too many to think about.  This pack really did take my full bandwidth of figuring out and thinking how I would use the pack to make it a genuine replacement for my previous, totally waterproof pack. 

Out in rain: doesn't soak through.  If you don't towel it off it does soak through over time, but the contents don't get wet, the bag exterior just feels damp.  I have worn it in heavy rain with this effect.  I do have a backpack cover that I will most likely use in heavy rain because I don't see any reason to challenge the oilskin, but it's great to feel secure when rain is not heavy or changes suddenly that I don't need to stop and put the cover on my pack halfway to work. 

This pack is pretty spacious in a way I don't always like.  I'm a structured bag kind of girl.  However, it is working fine for going to work where I take a notebook, various bottles of water and tea, a lunchbox, maybe my climbing clothes, and have space to buy a few groceries on my way home.  If it is not full at all, the straps fail to hold down the roll top, because you can't cinch them tightly enough, so it's a bag better at medium capacity.  It has certainly given me the confidence to make a few other little bags in my queue (once my sewing stuff is up and running) and to try out the Klum House backpack pattern which I have also now acquired in a kit with all sorts of backpack making goodies!  Sewing feels far away right now as I am just dealing with moving in, but I'm sure eventually I'll be back.