Make a backpack

Every year, the start of the school year is a source of joy at the workshop! We eagerly and excitedly await the arrival of our new students! We buy pencils and prepare new patterns in anticipation of autumn, which always arrives faster than expected :)

One of the projects we want to share with you this back-to-school season is this easy backpack, but one that has so much style!

You will need:

A second-hand belt found in a bazaar :)
Print the actual size backpack pattern by clicking HERE
In a 150cm fabric:
- 40cm of contrasting fabric for the reinforcement piece at the bottom of the bag and the straps
- 75cm of fabric for the outside of the bag
- 75cm of lining

The first step is to assemble the straps of your bag. This involves folding the fabric in half, right sides together, and pinning it in place. Next, you'll need to sew a straight stitch, keeping a 1cm seam allowance, and press the seam allowances open with an iron.

Fold the braids right sides together lengthwise

Once assembled, you'll need to turn your braids right side out. Considering the stiffness of our fabric, we chose to make a temporary seam at one end of our braid and turn it right side out using a ruler.

Now we'll need to unpick the temporary seam we used to turn the strap to the side and press our straps, making sure to keep the seam in the center. We've also done some nice contrasting stitching on each side of our straps to make them stronger :)

Now we'll start assembling the backpack pieces. First, we'll need to sew the reinforcement piece to the bottom of our bag. The first step is to fold the seam allowance with an iron, keeping a 1cm measurement.

Before continuing, you will need to make sure that you have transferred all of your notches and all of the lines indicating the placement of the straps and reinforcements onto your fabric.

Once you have marked the location of your reinforcement piece, we recommend drawing a line on the right side of your bag fabric with a magic pencil, from one side of your piece to the other. This line will allow you to apply the reinforcement piece and ensure that it is perfectly straight! You will need to repeat this step for both pieces (front and back) of your bag.

On the front piece, position your belt under the reinforcement piece, in the center of your bag, leaving the belt sticking out at the bottom of your bag.

Now that we have everything well prepared, we are ready to topstitch the reinforcement piece on the bottom of the bag! To do this, we will make a straight seam at a distance of 3mm from the folded part to the top of the reinforcement piece. It would be wise to go very slowly when you get to the belt to avoid the needle breaking :) You will have to repeat the same operation for the back of the bag... but without the belt :)

Now it's time to place our straps on the back piece of our bag. First, you'll need to place the wrong side of the belt against the right side of your fabric where indicated on the pattern. Then, you'll need to place the wrong side of the straps on each side, always following the pattern's instructions.

You'll need to pin everything in place. We recommend stabilizing everything with a straight stitch. This step is optional, but we plan on carrying a lot of books, so we want our straps to be strong :) This reinforcing seam should be located 5mm inside the rectangle indicating the location of the finishing piece that will hide the straps.

Now that everything is stable, we can focus on placing our finishing piece on the back of our bag. To do this, place the wrong side of your leather piece against the right side of the fabric and topstitch the piece in place around the entire edge of the rectangle, respecting a 3mm seam allowance.

There you have it, your back piece is now ready to be assembled. Now we can assemble the front and back of the bag!

First, you will need to position the front and back pieces of the bag right sides together. Then, you will need to pin the straps of your bag in the locations indicated on the pattern and make sure that they do not twist on themselves :) You will then be able to assemble the 2 pieces together using a straight seam, respecting a seam allowance of 1cm. You will need to assemble the sides and the bottom only... not the corners because we will need them to create the thickness of our bag :)

You can repeat the same process for the lining. However, you will need to leave an opening on the side because it is through this opening that we will be able to turn the bag right side out later.

Once this seam is completed, you will need to press the seam allowances open for both the lining and the main fabric of the bag.

We will now assemble the corners at the bottom of our bag to create volume. This involves placing the fabric right sides together, with the seam on the bottom of the bag aligned with the seam on the side of the bag, and sewing the two layers together, respecting a seam allowance of 1 cm.

It's time to assemble the lining with the bag! To do this, you will need to place the lining piece inside the bag, the right side of the lining against the right side of the fabric. Place the fabric pieces so that the side seams on the lining piece and on the fabric piece fit perfectly. Pin the edge of the opening and assemble the 2 pieces together, respecting a seam allowance of 1cm.

Now we're going to turn the bag right side out and reveal our beautiful work :) To do this, we'll need to insert our hand into the opening we left in the lining piece, take the main fabric piece of our bag and pull it completely out of the lining until the bag is right side out.

We will insert the lining inside the bag and iron the lining creating an indentation. That is, the lining should remain inside the bag, at a distance of 3mm from the bag opening.

We will now topstitch the opening of the bag to add strength with a straight seam, respecting a seam allowance of 6mm.

All that's left is to close the opening in the lining piece. If you don't like loose linings, we recommend securing the corners of the lining with the corners of the bag before closing the opening... which we didn't do here and is quite difficult to explain without pictures :S So we'll move on to the last step and sew the opening. To make it easier, we recommend pressing the opening flat with the iron. Afterwards, all you have to do is topstitch the opening, respecting a 2mm seam allowance!