Faux Leather Cartoon Messenger Bag

Make your own 2D cartoon bag. Minimum sewing, a lot of glue and several contrasting colours. It's a small, flat messenger bag fit to carry a tablet or a book and a few odds and ends. 

If you like the idea but feel like you are too old to rock the cartoon bag, you can always tweak the design into a more rectangular shape, skip the shoulder straps and use it as a laptop or a tablet cover. 

• printer
• sewing machine (you could do without it, but it will be harder)
• large, sharp fabric scissors
• large piece of black leatherette (min. 50cm x 100cm)
• A4 and A5 leatherette sheets in various colours
• leather or strong fabric glue
• 1-1.5 inch thick black leatherette bag strap

Print and cut out the form (in 2-3 duplicates). You want the paper form to be about 10% bigger than the size of the bag you want. You have to account for the stitches. 

Cut out the back of the bag first, in leather fabric and lining fabric.

Cut or fold the top of the paper form and cut out the front piece of the bag. 

When cutting the lining fabric remember to add 1-2cm extra at the opening of the bag (for both the front and the back part).

Don't cut anything else yet. 

To keep the bag looking as cartoon-ish as possible, I decided to only use stitches in places that will bear the weight. So the only places that were sewn were the body of the bag and the shoulder strap. 

At the opening of the bag, where the lining fabric would normally be folded and sewn together with the leather, I opted to use fabric glue instead.

I folded the fabric and glued it at the edge of the openings (I did it for the front and the back piece). 

I didn't want to use dressmaking pins because they leave holes in the fabric. I just used a small amount of fabric glue to secure the lining to the leather pieces. 

I stacked the parts inside out for sewing:

back lining - back leather (leather part facing up) - front leather (leather part facing down) - front lining.

I used a few pieces of weak double sided tape between the leather pieces to hold the shape securely while sewing. 

I stitched the outline of the bag using a sewing machine (use black thread, I used beige for better pictures). Trim the edges of the bag, be careful not to cut the thread. Remove the double sided tape from the inside of the bag and turn up inside out. 

Flatten the edges with an iron (low heat) through a sheet of baking paper.  

Cut out the flap from the paper form and check if the size is adequate. In my case I had to trim it by 5mm because the flap was too big. 

To make the flap rigid, but malleable, I glued two sheets of leather together and cut the flap shape out. It will keep better shape if it's glued, not sewn. Remember to add an inch of fabric to the top of the flap. That extra inch will be used to secure the flap to the back of the bag. 

Sew the flap to the bag.

Measure how long you want the strap to be, trim it and sew it to the bag in marked areas.

Print another paper form, this one smaller than the original one (about 5% smaller).

Cut out coloured pieces out of paper and arrange them on the bag. Trim them if necessary and then cut them out of coloured leather.

Glue them to the bag with leather or fabric glue.