A Broken Bag

Mathias Kokholm, is a young and very interesting editor and publisher. He is a bookworm and he carries a ton of books in his leather messenger bag from Works Unltd. This has resulted in a bunch of busted seams, broken rivets and a bag that would have been ready for the garbage bin, if he hadn't returned to the shop to have it fixed. The job later got passed on to me, and I did it as a favour.

This is a small pictorial of what I had to do in order to fix the bag. Actually, I didn't fix the bag, so to speak. I improved it basically because a hand stitch (saddle stitch) is way stronger and longer lasting that a machine stitch (lock stitch). I'll find an illustration at some point to show this. I did a lot of hand sewing on the bag, and I just used the same hole that were already present from the machine stitching, which wasn't all straight.

Then I hand punched a solid brass rivet and made a leather washer as backing, to exchange the jiffy rivets that had fallen off. And finally I gave it some - you guessed it - pure Neatsfoot oil, as it looked a bit neglected.

None of the repairs were done to make it look like it when it was new. No, the repairs were indeed made to make it last even longer.

Had I known, how time consuming this was, I would probably have thought twice about accepting the gig, but every stitch made is a learning experience for me. On top of this, Mathias is a great guy, and I like the idea of him carrying around too many books in his bag.

BEFORE

AFTER