Backpack envy

My son started attend­ing a Steiner preschool this year. My daugh­ter, who attended that same preschool last year, has moved up to their “Lit­tle Kindy” class­room. So to cel­e­brate this mile­stone of both my kids going to the same “big school,” I promised them each a new backpack.

Until now I had been pack­ing the kids’ school and day­care stuff in large nappy-bag style bags I made. But when my kids see all the other chil­dren going to school wear­ing (mostly bright-colored plas­tic) back­packs, they nat­u­rally wanted back­packs just like them. Yes, peer pressure.

Well, I really dis­like the look and feel of plas­tic back­packs, but I didn’t want my kids to feel left out at school. So I wanted to make nice fab­ric back­packs that still resem­ble the shape of plas­tic ones.  Here’s what I came up with for Mr. A.  He chose this fab­ric himself.

The pat­tern is my own, but let me tell you, there were some strug­gles along the way. The first ver­sion came out ter­ri­bly (I’m embar­rassed to even tell you why), and the sec­ond ver­sion came out way too big. After going back to the draw­ing board, the third ver­sion was just right. Well, it still looks pretty big on Mr. A., but you know, he’s barely three, and will soon grow into the back­pack size — I hope.

Here are more pho­tos of the back­pack details. It has a flap pocket in the mid­dle, side patch pock­ets, and lit­tle tabs on both sides to make it eas­ier to open and close the zip­per. The strap is padded and adjustable.

Here’s what the inside looks like.

I used a heavy-duty cot­ton can­vas for the lin­ing, to give the back­pack a good struc­ture and shape, like those plas­tic ones. I bound the raw seams with orange bias bind­ing, just because a bit of color is fun.

A few days later, and after much nag­ging by Miss M., I fin­ished her new back­pack. Of course it’s pink — but I love that my kids chose the match­ing print. How cute!

I have to admit this one came out nicer than my son’s. I made small improve­ments, like using larger tabs on the side, and using slid­ers for for adjust­ing the straps (for the black one, I used dou­ble D rings, which didn’t work too well).

I hope my kids will be happy to wear them to school, and not feel too envi­ous of other plas­tic back­packs out there.…