Plans for Sewing a Messenger Bag

Series Summary

Make your own messenger bag as a fashion statement or just a way to save money. Either way, put your sewing skills to work. Sewing is an ancient craft that still has remarkable relevance in today's modern world. The art of stitching and assembling pieces of fabric together either by hand or with the use of a modern sewing machine is still a valuable skill and can be used for industry, home, or artistic purposes. Industrial sewing is usually done with the use of machines, but for seamstresses, alteration givers, and most casual sewers, an old fashioned needle and thread is still incredibly useful and more often than not the desired method since it enables far more detail. Tailoring and dressmaking require not only a needle and thread, but also other tools and materials that you can find easily at arts and crafts stores.

In this free series of instructional sewing videos, our expert seamstress Lenee Alexander will demonstrate how to sew your own messenger bag, which can also double as a purse or handbag. She takes you through each step of the process, from choosing the material to picking out a strap to determining button placement. You will learn how to cut and mark the fabric, then how to reinforce it to make sure your messenger bag is fit for duty. Lenee also shows you stitching techniques to hold everything together.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Lenee Alexander with lemeealexanderdesigns.com and today I'm going to show you how to make a simple messenger bag. No lining, no pockets. It's super plain and simple. It's basically a beginner hand bag to make. There's only 2 pieces. I have the strap, which is one piece, and the body of the messenger bag, which is another piece. We don't need that many supplies for it. All you're going to need is the fabric that you want to make the purse out of. I chose this fabric because it's hemp fabric and it's just really cool. I like the idea of using something that's biodegradable. It's real popular fabric also. Then you need a button patch, which I chose this. It's orange. It's going to match this little button that we used for the closure, which is from an old sweater of mine and I've had it forever. I just like the orange and the brown. It matches this, so I think that'll look really nice. Then we're going to need a ruler. I always use my trusty 12-inch ruler and a pair of scissors, and then a piece of chalk also. We're going to need to mark stuff, so we need a piece of chalk. What we're going to do first is I'm going to show you how to figure out what size of messenger bag that you need. We'll talk about that in the next clip. "