Hello all,

I'm posting a wine bottle carrier I designed for my brother-in-law, a serious guitar player. The design is inspired by traditional pad-and-tail guitar straps that thread a relatively thin strap through the shoulder pad.

The vertical side pieces are from Hermann Oak bridle, acknowledging his St. Louis roots.

The lambskin swaddle wrapping the bottle is sewn to a disk the bottle sits on.

Although the horizontal straps circling the bottle look sketchy, it is quite secure. I swung it all around to test the safety. I used a scarf joint on these and sewed them to the uprights under the thin strap.

The thin handle strap has its reinforcement sewn into the box joint at the base.

I hadn't made box joints in a while, but I like how these turned out, and the design requires only 15 or so stitches for each of the two pieces.

I had to make the carrier fairly quickly to meet a birthday deadline, so I'm sure we can come up with improvements.

It was a happy moment when my brother-in-law opened the package -- he got the guitar connection immediately.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Well done, Adri! My first bags were much, much simpler than this. It is admirable to dive in this way.

If you enlarge the next version, will you be able to use the handles as a sort of strap to carry the bag over a shoulder like an Hermes Victoria Elan?

Hi Adri, good question. There are a few ways of doing this, but the video below is how I sharpen mine. Although I use sandpaper in the video, you may need to use a file if the punches are especially dull.

Please can anyone can help?

Terrific bag @leemskm!

Some favorite moments include: asymmetrical use of panels above the base; vertical panels that give the bag "lift," for lack of a better word; bold contrasting thread; a bright lining that makes it easy to find items inside, is a bit surprising and just fun to see; a closure that appears to be fairly low-fuss but is also a well integrated design feature that continues the theme of contrasty thread.

As for suggestions, that's tough. Pipe the base, sure, but this looks perfectly fine, and I wouldn't sweat this iteration. Inside, maybe a phone (other?) pocket and possibly an attached swivel snap for keeping keys handy. In a deep bag, some sort of bag organizer can be helpful, but that's not really about your bag design, I suppose. Have you continued the bold use of color or some other design feature on the strap?

The choice of color for the base seems entirely reasonable. That said, maybe consider experimenting further with base colors, possibly black or olive -- hard to say from this distance how those or others might or might not work. Also consider experimenting with a base leather of the same sheen as the panels to see if the trio hangs together in a pleasing way. As an experiment, you might be able to wax the current base to bring up the sheen a bit, if you wished.

Thanks so much for showing this original work. I'd be quite proud of this design if it were mine!

Hey Mark, that's great to hear! Yes, having a dedicated strop on hand makes a big difference in maintaining that sharp edge. Let us know how it goes. Do you already have the wood for it?

Also, I never heard of flaming the paint. I supose this is to make it dry faster? If so it is best to let it dry by itself. If speeding the process is necessary, put it in front of a small air blower, or a heater set at a low temperature. A direct flame is bound to create problems, not only bubbles but potentially it can burn the leather or the thread.

Welcome Adri! Thank you for stopping by and introducing yourself to us all.

Philip