During the Covid pandemic, lots of us are eating take-out at times when we would have dined in before. That means a huge amount of additional trash in the form of single-use takeout containers, bags, etc. It’s pretty hard to get your food without the container, but at least the disposable silverware is easily avoided! 

Portable Utensil Rolls, three ways

These handy little silverware rolls make a compact and convenient package with a cloth napkin and real, washable utensils so you always have them when you need them. So you can still support your favorite local eateries during the pandemic, while creating just a little less trash. I like to ask for my food with no lid, no bag, nothing except what it takes to hold the food; then I sit down in the grass or on a bench outside and eat with my own portable utensils. 

Folding utensils and a cloth napkin

As always, there are several options you can choose from or modify to suit your needs. There are many, many options out there for portable utensils – camping sporks, folding flatware, screw-together chopsticks, compact silverware, etc; and many of these come in packages with multiples, so you can put together sets for everyone on your gift list. 

And these little rolls are a great way to re-use and upcycle fabric in smaller pieces – good sources of materials include old clothing, pillow cases, tote bags, etc. If you have quilting cotton left over from making face masks, this is a great way to use some of it. Anything you can easily wash.

Enjoy! 

PDF of the full project:

Pickle Project – Portable Utensil Set

These popular little bags are great for easy, one-handed access to your bike food, a spare water bottle, or other on-bike necessities. And they’re much easier to make than you might think! 

In a free online presentation hosted by Charles River Wheelers on the evening of Thursday, May 21, I’ll demonstrate how to make one and answer any questions that come up along the way. You can purchase materials from a list of vendors I recommend (below), but if you don’t want to do that, I’ll even go over how you can make one using materials you probably already have around the house. 

The pattern is very simple, and the basic version only requires a rectangle. The modified version isn’t a rectangle, but the non-rectangular part is pretty forgiving. You can print pattern pieces for both versions here, with dimensions annotated.

Standard Version, JPG
Standard Version, PDF
Magnetic Flap Version, JPG
Magnetic Flap Version, PDF

They’re provided both as PDF’s and as JPG’s. Be sure to print them at full scale, so the pieces don’t come out smaller than you expect. The basic version fits on two sheets of 8.5″x11″ paper; the flap version fits on four sheets. Once you print the images, assemble the pages so that the labeled dimensions measure what they should. You may need to trim or overlap the edges, or leave a gap. Since the shapes are very simple, if your printer does scale the images smaller, you can always cut in between the labeled parts and spread the pieces until the dimensions measure as they should. 

This is a great project for beginners or experienced sewists. It requires only a small amount of materials, and is small enough that if you don’t have access to a sewing machine you can even sew it by hand in a reasonable amount of time.

We’ll also cover the quick’n’dirty basics of using a sewing machine, cutting your pieces accurately, and modifying the size or shape of the design to suit your needs. This basic design can easily be turned into a water bottle carrier with a shoulder strap, an extra pocket to strap onto your bag or backpack, or any number of other uses. 

You don’t need a special or fancy or industrial sewing machine for this; even though you may use a heavy-ish fabric, you will not need to sew through many layers at once, so any home sewing machine should manage it just fine.

Materials:

The short version is: Sturdy fabric, draw cord, and something to make straps out of, plus other hardware if desired.

The detailed version: 
   • Fabric for the outside, and fabric for the lining. A piece 14” x 14” will be plenty; a “fat quarter” will work.
I recommend a stiffer or heavier fabric for the outside and a thinner, lighter one for the lining. It’s nice if at least one of these is waterproof. For the sample I used coated Cordura nylon for the outside and coated nylon oxford for the lining. You can also find suitable materials by disassembling old bags or packs or jackets, blue jeans, etc. Even a tyvek envelope will work!

   • Webbing for the straps, about half a yard for the straps that must be sewn onto the bag; a bit less than a yard for the mounting straps.
Flat weave nylon webbing is perfect, but lots of other things will also work. If you can’t get ahold of webbing, you can even fold your own straps out of fabric scraps.

   • One “barrel lock” to hold the drawcord. Some barrel locks have slots on the side to tether them down, which makes one-handed access easier.

   • Shock cord for the drawcord, about 18”. 1/8” shock cord is ideal and will work well with most barrel locks, but you can make do with other types of cord or even a shoelace.

   • Buckles and/or straps to mount the bag. You can use straps you might already have, or you can make your own with buckles and webbing, or with velcro. A really quick and easy solution is Velcro “One-wrap”, which is often sold in rolls at hardware stores or even CVS, used for tying up cables and any number of other things. The type of buckle I used for the example is called “side release”.

   • For flap-closing alternative version, you don’t need the barrel lock or the shock cord, but you do need a couple of strong magnets. I used a pair of round rare earth magnets, 3/8” in diameter and 1/8” thick. You might have something like this kicking around, or you can order a box of them for cheap from Amazon or many hardware or craft stores.

Where to order more specialized materials:
Outdoor Wilderness Fabrics, www.owfinc.com<http://www.owfinc.com>
Located in Idaho and still shipping during the pandemic. They will have everything you need including fabrics, webbing, and buckles. I recommend asking for Priority Mail, which is way way faster than UPS Ground from where they’re located.

Rockywoods, www.rockywoods.com<http://www.rockywoods.com>
Also still shipping, and will also have everything you need.

Ripstop by the Roll, www.ripstopbytheroll.com<http://www.ripstopbytheroll.com>
They’re on the pricier side, but they do custom printing and also carry more high-end technical fabrics. Those are probably overkill for this project, but on the other hand, you only need a small amount so it’s not that big a splurge.

Spoonflower, www.spoonflower.com<http://www.spoonflower.com>
Custom printed fabrics using either your own designs you upload, or you can shop for designs uploaded by others. They don’t do technical nylon, but their heavier canvas for the outside with cotton lining would be a decent choice as long as you don’t mind that it’s not waterproof. It’s an easy way to make a personalized, customized, decorated, or monogrammed bag though.

Buckle Guy, www.buckleguy.com<http://www.buckleguy.com>
They don’t have fabric, but if you go in for fancier buckles or hardware they have a good selection.

Since I didn’t get around to doing a holiday project last year, I’m doing a big one this year. So big that it has morphed into two travel-themed parts that I hope will also work well as tutorials for generally useful skills and inspiration for other future projects.

Part 1 has some basics about sewing in zippers (it’s easy! really!!) and making various small bags and pouches that can be great as travel accessories, school supplies, a way to organize your backpack or all those chargers and cords, etc. 

Part 2 extends the same concepts a little further to make two different styles of duffel bag. These look complicated and fancy, but I promise you they are easier than they look and quite accessible.

And the variations are endless. If you look around, you’ll see all kinds of items made basically the same way; from designer luggage to dollar store pencil cases. They can be quilted, they can be waterproof, they can be colorful, they can be plain; use cotton, nylon, leather, clear vinyl, or recycled materials. 

I hope you enjoy these projects! I would love to see what you make. Please don’t be shy about asking questions, or making requests for future projects! 

As always, I make these tutorials available free of charge for your personal use. So if you enjoy them, please consider making a donation to a worthy bike advocacy organization. Thanks!

Part 1: 

Pickle Project_ Travel Accessories and Zipper Tutorials

Part 2: 

Pickle Project_ Duffel Bags and 3-D shapes for more travel accessories

It’s finally here, the 2015 Pickle Project! 

This year’s free pattern isn’t exactly a pattern – it’s more like a formula, or a recipe. Previous free patterns have all been for items small enough that the pattern pieces can fit on normal paper that you can print out. But this year, the project is a backpack or tote bag. Those won’t fit on letter-sized paper. But fortunately, the structure is very simple, and they can be made entirely out of three rectangles of material. The “recipe” will tell you everything you need to know to cut the pieces the right size for whatever size or shape of bag you want to make. It will work for a toddler’s preschool bag, and it will work to carry your groceries and beer home. 

This project is a great way to repurpose old tarps and banners, but it also includes a list of places you can buy new materials as well. They make great gifts for cyclists and non-cyclists alike. 

This tutorial is available for free, but if you like it, please consider making a small donation to a worthy cycling advocacy organization. 

Click here for a PDF

Or click here for a Google Document

Here are some examples:

These all came from one banner from West Medford Open Studios

This was a giant banner with the Saucony logo on it.

Preschooler-sized backpack for my nephew.

As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask. If you ask them in the comments, then other people can see the answers too. I’d love to see what you make!

Enjoy, and happy holidays!

*** This pattern is now also available as a kit! The kit includes everything you need to make any of the options for pockets in the pattern, and an assortment of fabrics and colors. Check them out on the “Accessories” page!***

For the last couple of years, I’ve been making a tradition of putting up a free sewing pattern every year around the holidays. I think that making a gift yourself is much more personal than just buying another generic gift set, and it’s always nice to give the recipient something special and unique that they can actually use and enjoy. 

This year, the pattern is for a cycling wallet that will carry your small essentials and fit neatly into a jersey pocket. As with the others, the instructions are hopefully comprehensive enough that someone with little or no sewing experience (or even without a sewing machine, if you are patient!) should be able to manage it; but if you are more ambitious there is no end of possible ways to vary it. It could also be a fun project for kids or craft parties. 

The Cycling Wallet requires under two square feet of material, which can be new, scraps, or reclaimed/recycled. I made the demo wallets mostly out of scraps, since I have them. The navy and khaki one is even pieced together out of smaller pieces. The smiley-faced one is made of four plastic shopping bags ironed together, just for something a little different. The denim one is made with a “sandwich” of three materials: denim outside, tyvek in between for waterproofness, and quilting cotton inside for the stripes. The solid blue one is made of scraps of basic vinyl-coated polyester, similar to many banners and tarps. At the end of the instructions there is a list of places where you can order supplies online.

There are several options for the pockets inside the wallet. To make the main backing piece, you select the type of pockets for each half and join the applicable backing pieces at the fold line. Option A is the most basic – the fabric folds back on itself to create one lengthwise pocket, that can alternatively be divided into two card pockets with a seam down the middle. Option B is a pleated pocket, with extra depth to accommodate a bulkier cell phone or other item. Option C is a zippered lengthwise pocket with a full-length slot pocket behind it. 

The instructions are long, but don’t worry! The process is really not complicated. They’re long because they have lots of pictures of the process, hopefully lots of other helpful information, and because I might just possibly have a mild tendency toward long-winded verbosity, so don’t let the number of pages scare you off! Just in case though, the pattern pieces an the instructions are in separate documents.

Click Here for Pattern Pieces

Click Here for Instructions

Click Here for Instructions with photos removed (fewer pages, smaller file size)

Have at it, and have fun!

Now that the new Dill Pickle handlebar bag is up, I thought this time I’d try and document my design process for all to see, in case anyone’s interested.

The first step is to figure out what it is that I want to create. Personally, on long rides I use a small-ish handlebar bag for things like food, camera, sunglasses, arm warmers, etc: basically, the stuff I want to be able to get at easily while riding. The cuesheet goes on top of the handlebar bag where it’s in easy view. Tools, extra layers, dry clothing, etc. goes in a saddlebag, which keeps it away from my grubby fingers, spilled gu, and banana peels.

The handlebar bag that I’ve used for years was actually one of the first bike bags I ever made. It’s sort of rough, and has way more buckles than it needs. I made a mount for it that keeps it away from my fingers and also holds my headlight. It’s been useful and successful, but there were a few things I wanted to improve on. The lid operates in a stupid way. It’s easy enough to unzip the back and stick my hand in, but I like the easy-open lids that the traditional boxy front bags have. It can strap directly to the handlebars, but then it gets in the way of wrapping my fingers around the tops.

My old standby handlebar bag, on its mount

So there were some things I wanted to improve upon from the one I’d made before. There were also a few things I wanted to improve on over lots of other common handlebar bags on the market. Most handlebar bags with a larger capacity and a cuesheet window on top need tools to install, leave a mounting bracket on the bars when the bag isn’t in use, and keep their shape only through completely rigid and heavy internal structure. It makes no sense to me for the bag and all its associated hardware to weigh as much as its contents when full.  There are some smaller ones that strap onto the bars, but they get in the way of your fingers and usually don’t have a cuesheet window and are less convenient to get into while riding.  Then there are the traditional boxy rando front bags, but they require a front rack and usually a decaleur as well, and really work best on bikes that are designed to carry the load that way in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, a bike with a fully-integrated design from the ground up can be a beautiful thing, but many of us use the same bike for more than one thing, or have a bike we like and don’t want to re-design that wasn’t built that way.

So the goals for this model were as follows:

•  Similar in size to the one I’ve been using
• Cuesheet window or other attachment system on the lid
• Easy access to the contents with one hand
• Stays out of the way of wrapping your fingers around the tops
• Self-contained mounting hardware, as universally adjustable as possible for use on most road bikes
• Light enough in weight that it’s actually lighter than whatever you might fill it with, and so that it doesn’t have as much affect on the handling
• As much cuesheet real estate as possible, while remaining narrow enough to use with narrow handlebars and still have room for wrapping thumbs around hoods
• Tall enough from top to bottom to be able to offer a dedicated smartphone pocket

The obvious “footprint,” or basic overall shape when looking down from above for something like this is a rectangle. But a rectangle would put a long flat side against the bars and get in the way of your hands. For months and months I thought about using different kinds of spacers to offset the bag from the bars. Rubber bumpers? Wooden blocks? Extra-thick straps? All these had drawbacks in stability, ease of use, complexity of construction, etc. If you’ve ever wondered what goes through my head when I’m out on my bike by myself for hours and hours and hours, now you know. I also began looking into having a version of my own home-grown bag-and-headlight mount produced.

But eventually, I decided that a rectangle was just not going to work. The simplest way to keep out of the way of your fingers is just to get rid of the part that would be in the way. Then it could strap straight onto the handlebars, using cords around the levers to support it at the desired angle.

In thinking about the mounting system, lid closure, etc, I spent some time browsing through catalogs of luggage hardware and realized that while shock cord on a hook is a common and simple way of keeping a lid closed, lots of handbags have something even easier to use: magnetic snap closures. They close themselves as long as you get the stud into the general vicinity of the socket and opening it is as easy as grabbing the lid, but in the shear direction they are completely secure. One way or the other, the closure would have to be off to the side, around the corner from the flat edge that would be right up against the bars and stem or it would be awkward to use.

So off to the drawing board to draft the first prototype. For a variety of reasons, I don’t use CAD. I do it the old fashioned way, like this:

Yep, I remember my high school geometry!

The first prototype had an aesthetically pleasing, curved “footprint”. It curved away from the handlebars, with an oval-ish lid and a curved bottom. The bottom and front were one panel, and the sides and back were one panel that curved around to the front. But it had a few problems. First, the lid overlapped the mounting straps so that the stem would be in the way of closing the bag. But more critically, the curved shape meant that it could deform too much when loaded, or even just when pulled out of shape by the mounting cords. In order to keep the weight and complication down, the shape had to make use of the structural properties of the plastic, not fight against them.

So on to prototype no. 2. The second version had side panels angling out from the bars that contained thicker, more rigid plastic with a curved front/bottom/back panel reinforced by a lighter plastic that gained rigidity by wrapping around the curve. I mounted it on the bike, and it was much closer to what I wanted:

But it still had a few issues. It looked too big and bulbous, to start with, out of place and out of proportion and I felt also too big to properly support its load this way. My original idea was to offer a row of possible mounting locations on the side panels for the cords that go around the levers, to accommodate differences in bike geometry. But upon trying it out, I realized that this was stupid because the bag is most stable when supported from the bottom, regardless of where the cord goes after that. And I didn’t like the way it was distorting the fabric of the side panels – it didn’t look like a recipe for longevity. Lastly, when bouncing the front end of the bike around, the bag would bounce up rather a lot. The cords keep it from bouncing down, but it needed something countering that to be completely stable. The fork offers just such an attachment point.

But otherwise, while the size and shape needed tweaking, the basic structure seemed good. The lid opened and closed easily, and the cuesheet window offered a reasonable amount of viewable area with a reasonable amount of security for keeping the cuesheet from going flying when the lid was open. And the lid opened and closed really neatly and easily. The top was just high enough above the bars for the lid to stay out of the way of the mounting straps.

So, back to the ol’ pencil and paper again for round three:

Prototype no. 3 fixed the major issues to my satisfaction, so now it was time for some real-world testing. Fortunately, we were off to DROVES for the weekend with our friends John and Pamela.  DROVES is an annual trip they put together to go out and ride gorgeous practically-vertical dirt roads in Vermont. What better way to test the function and stability of a new design than to go careening down a bumpy dirt road with it? And not only that, I could take the opportunity to try it on Pamela’s bike. She rides with tiny 36cm bars with short reach. I’d already tried it on a 60cm bike belonging to a tall friend, so if it fit neatly onto her bike, it should work for just about anything.

Pamela’s bike indicated one more change to the design: she has disc brakes on that bike, so any stabilization strap needs to go either around the fork blades or around the fork crown. But actually, going around the fork blades provides better side-to-side stability anyway. But aside from that, the bag not only fit Pamela’s front end, but also matched her new Honey’s navy-and-gray paint job to perfection.

I put the bag back on my bike, dumped the contents of my saddlebag plus a few other odds and ends for additional ballast into it, and took it out for its road test. Saturday was cold and raining, and even started sleeting while we were out, which felt like being sandblasted in the face on the descents. Sunday was a bit better, and we went out for longer. But a couple days’ descending on dirt and washboarding and potholes and gravel and downed tree limbs from the storm put the bag through its paces. It stayed stable, the lid stayed closed, and it didn’t bounce. 

So, success!

The next step was to transfer the pattern pieces onto thicker, more permanent paper, make some more of them with the last revision of the fork straps, and take photos.