Posted on July 25, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

I might be slightly insane? Or am I going to prove something about the nature and accessibility of sewing and MYOG¹ as a hobby?

I love my modular backpack, but it has a very modern look that is maybe not the best thing when otherwise dressed in historybounding dress, and it’s also a bit bigger than I planned or needed it to be.

So, when one of the shops I buy from had some waterproof cotton canvas on sale I failed my saving throw against temptations and bought a few meters, with the intent to make myself a backpack in a different style.

It needs to be a backpack, because my back doesn’t like asymmetrical bags², and as far as I know 19th century backpacks weren’t the most comfortable things, so I decided to go for a vaguely timeless roll top model that has the added advantage not to require a lot of hardware for the closure, just a few D-rings.

Leather straps would look cool, but also require some tools that I still don’t have, so I decided to look for some cotton webbing, and when I finally found some in 25 mm and 50 mm width I could finally start on the project.

Except for one thing: thread. As much as I believe that regular n°50 cotton thread got a bad reputation from sellers who decided to cut quality in favour of profit, it is not up to the task of sewing a backpack. Nor that I’d use regular sew-all poly thread either.

I do have some of the thread I used for my other backpack, which would have been strong enough, but it’s also in black, which isn’t exactly the look I was aiming for on the natural / ecru colour of both the canvas and the webbing. I also misremembered it as only being available in that colour (it isn’t), so I wasn’t tempted into doing a full online order of technical materials just for that.

On the other hand, I did have in my stash some strong thread I could trust for this job, in natural / ecru. There was only one problem: it was 33×2 Tex linen, and not suitable for the sewing machine. You can’t handsew a backpack.

Or can you? Of course it’s going to be much slower, but I’m still in a situation where I have more time and space for handsewing than I have for machine sewing. And as for strength, my perception is that for the same stitch length an handsewn backstitch is stronger than a machine lockstitch, or at least it is more effort to unpick (and thus harder to accidentally unravel if the thread breaks).

And so I tried.

And it worked.

Having to backstitch everything instead of being able to use a running backstitch of course meant that it was slower than other sewing projects, and any time there were more than two layers of fabric I had to use the stabbing motion rather than the sewing one, which is even slower, but other than a few places with many layers of both fabric and webbing it wasn’t hard.

And to be fair, the seams were fewer and shorter than other sewing projects, and with the usual interruptions and uneven time availability it was done in less than a month, which is somewhat typical for one of my handsewn projects.

It may have been because of the pattern, but I think it’s relevant that it was also easier than other backpacks I’ve made, with significantly less cursing, even when doing seams that would have been quite fiddly when sewn by machine.

I have to admit that now I’m tempted to plan another backpack using the same pattern or a slight variation, sewn by machine in a different fabric, to see the difference in the time it takes and to check if the changes I think would make it easier to sew by machine are actually the right thing to do. But maybe I’ll wait a bit, other projects are in the queue.

The pattern is as usual online, released as #FreeSoftWear.

Having used it for a while, I have to say that it is just the right size to fit all the things I usually carry,

The fact that it only opens from the top means that finding things that have fallen to the very bottom involves a bit of rummaging, but not having to change a zipper every few years when (not if) it breaks is also very nice, so I’m not sure which shape of backpack I prefer.

The soft back of course is an issue when the backpack is filled with small items, but the molle webbing is there exactly because I have plans to solve it, beside the trivial “put something flat towards the back”.

As an object, I’m happy with the result. As a project, it was way more than successful, exceeding all expectations, especially for something somewhat experimental like this one was.

1. Make Your Own Gear, i.e. sewing or otherwise constructing outdoorish equipment.↩︎
2. at least not if I fill them with stuff as I usually do with my backpack :D↩︎

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