Sunday, August 14, 2011

A cycling bag for Persimmon

For the birthday of my lovely girlfriend I decided to make her a cycling bag. She commutes to and from work by bike and needs to carry clothing, food, tools and sundries, and has been resorting to strapping a purse to the rear rack with bungee cords. I thought that a design with the least amount of removable parts would be ideal, but it would need to be easily installed and removed. I also wanted it to double as a purse while off the bike, and she's a sucker for giraffes, so the following bag was born:


The strap is removable, and can be carried in the bag while it is strapped into place.

Continuing the giraffe theme, there are giraffe heads at both ends of the bag for the purpose of mounting a rear blinking light:


The underside serves two functions - to hold the bungee cords and also to carry the u-lock. When in place on the rack, the hooks can be snaked under the rack and hooked onto the d-rings, providing a simple and secure method of holding the bag to the rack. As they're attached to the bag there isn't any chance of losing them:

The u-lock in place. It slides into a slot on the underside of the bag and eliminates the need to carry it elsewhere:


The bag in place on her bike, Persimmon:


This better illustrates how the bag attaches to the rack. It doesn't matter how much gear is stowed in the bag, as the low attachment points will keep it firmly in place no matter what:

A better shot of the u-lock in place. The bungee wraps around it and keeps it from sliding out:





Camera case and edge braiding

Here's a recent project - a case to protect an Argus Argoflex 75 camera. The straps are built into the camera, so all that was needed was a case to keep it from getting scratched. It needed to allow access to the tripod mount, shutter advance, attachment points for the flash, the film indicator and the shutter. Of course, the lenses needed to be easily exposed without having to remove the case, so when the flap is opened there is access to the viewfinder and the lenses and the case stays in place.





Current project - making a replacement wallet for one of my favorite clients. He loves the fact that the bright blue of this robot wallet sparked so many conversations, but unfortunately the original wallet was misplaced. Luckily I hang onto all the designs and patterns from previous jobs, so replacements are a snap. Here's a couple of shots of the edge braiding in progress: