Hi Y'all,
During his daily Mediterranean meditation Heinrich recently realized: Long time, no see - we have to change that!
Since four months we have been living in our new flat, and the close proximity to the sea is still exciting. In the meantime we received a key to the garage (just without a garage space, but that's ok) which provides us with a shortcut. Which means our walk to the sea is now a whole 100 meters long! Which means everyday after work we head to the beach and float for half an hour in the lukewarm Mediterranean. Life could be worse, right?
The last weeks Malta experienced a genuine heatwave. I know, I know - we should have expected something similar when moving to Malta. Yes, you're right. But you know what? I'm at that age where heatwaves collide with hot flushes - and this is no fun, I can tell you! Of course we have A/C in our flat, but we do not want to keep it running all the time. Therefore I was very grateful to cool off naturally.
And can you think of something else which makes you bear the heat? Exactly - ice scream! But to get it from the shop to your very own freezer and keep it in its desired aggregate state might pose a challenge when it's 38 degrees celsius, which is why I either had to buy a cooler or had to come up with an idea.
Just at that time I laid my grubby little hands on some merch issued by my friendly employer - namely these sun protection shields for the car. And I thought: challenge accepted, let me tinker a cooling bag out of that stuff.
My first attempt was to recycle an existing shopping bag (also merch, which bears the very fitting tag "fabric instead of flowers", obviously not by my employer), because the cut was plain and simple and the outer material pretty sturdy. And so I only sewed some sort of lining for this shopper from this sun shade foil material, because I wanted to test how you can cut and sew it. To close it I attached some velcro and I turned out pretty well.
As I had still some leftover sunshade material and the the bag was limited in size, I wanted to try a cooling backpack. The outer material I had to buy, because my Mount Scrapmore is completely used up, but at least I had some webbing and a buckle. Saturday I managed to get hold on some nice curtain fabric - could have beed a bit more sturdy for my liking, but in connection with the sunscreen material I thought it might work.
So I started cutting the shades - easy peasy using an all purpose scissors.
My tried and tested sewing machine bravely worked through all of it. To be on the safe side I switched to the highest stitch length, the material needed some support in guiding it under the foot and admittedly the handling was a bit stubborn, but all in all I was pleasantly surprised.
It was not planned as a highly sophisticated picnic backpack, thus I designed it quite simple and uncomplicated. First I built the inner body:
Then fitted the outer fabric:
My plan was to stick to a simple foldover version to close the backpack - and if I needed a bit more space I could easily leave it open to accommodate my pistachio ice cream shopping spree :-) Where I attached the buckle and the handles I enforced the fabric with SnapPap:
I shortly considered a transformer version, which means switch between a backpack with two straps and a shopper with one carrying strap, but the lenght of my webbing did not allow this option. Therefore I added a shorter handle which should do the job just as well.
After that I simply folded the outer fabric over the brim of the silver material and attached it with the machine and like this outer and inner bag were connected. The buckle straps and the carrying straps I also attached to the silver foil to have them double secured.
And this is how it looks like from the back:
...and front...
I think I am going to quilt the two layers in a few places, maybe do some hand stitching outlining the pattern of the fabric for example, but that will be it. It might not be stable enough to carry half a cow, but as I like my cows whole, that should be fine. And after all, I prefer ice cream :-)
