The Vanja bag in corduroy
This is the Vanja bag. The story behind her is that I mistakenly ordered some wide wale corduroy off Ebay earlier this year. It was too wide for the pants that I had in mind and thus the fabric has remained untouched in my stash. But a couple of weeks ago I suddenly got the idea to make totes out of the fabric instead. So I drafted a very rough sketch in my note book during a break in a table tennis match that I was covering. I wanted to come up with some kind of a “signature” tote, i.e. a design template that can generate many different versions. The corduroy version in the picture will be a gift to a friend who, like me, loves corduroy.
In the future I plan to make more variations of the Vanja bag, perhaps by using details like colour blocking and top stitching. I think a blue and white navy inspired version would look really nice for instance.
The lining is made of cotton curtains that I found in a sales bin. Also there is a little pocket inside for things like wallet, cell phone and keys.
I used magnetic snaps for closure so one doesn’t have to fiddle with a buttonhole when closing the lid. The wooden button on top is purely for decoration purpose.
