Hi all,
I wanted to share a couple of bags I made for bikepacking that I’m pretty chuffed with. Made them on a small, old machine at home but planning on testing out some ideas on the space over the coming weeks.
I have been looking for some bags for a while and 1) couldn’t find an off the shelf frame bag to fill the space on my frame, 2) the cost of a decent custom one was half what I paid for my bike, and 3) I’m a big DIYer and always want to do things myself and like testing my ability where possible, as well as reusing things that might have gone in the bin, plus 4) a bonus to get some free fabric!
All materials/fabrics are offcuts from my work, the designers and pattern makers were having a clean out so I managed to bag some decent bits (yellow bag is GORE-TEX Pro!) so nice to be able to give it another life. I had to buy zippers and some webbing unfortunately but always on the lookout for scraps if anyone has anything.
Yellow bag is a custom frame bag with two compartments. Not the tidiest of jobs but I think it will work as intended and pretty sturdy. I started following the video below but kind of got the hang of it pretty quickly and then freestyled the rest. The hardest part was creating a separator between the two compartments and being able to turn it the right way out once finished. I managed to achieve this by adding two ‘flaps’ attached to either side of the triangle with opposite velcro strips so it attaches close to the large sides. This helps with ballooning and sagging when full.
The second smaller bag is a stem/food/snack/bottle bag. This again is using scraps of material and is some kind of waterproof fabric. I again followed another video but once you start to visualise the final bag you can start to have a play with things and add your own little bits.
Definitely going to be making more of these and looking into other designs as well. Let me know if anyone is interested in making something similar and I can try and answer any questions. Could also a workshop activity if there were a few interested, however I’m self-taught so only know the basics.
Big thanks to the team at bikepacking.com for the videos.
Next up, a top tube bag!
Frame bag video here: https://bikepacking.com/gear/how-to-make-a-bikepacking-framebag-krampus/
Snack bag video here: https://bikepacking.com/gear/make-your-own-stem-bag/
