Recently I was trying to buy a shoulder/messenger bag made from Cordura with molle/pals webbing, but was unable to find one with specific features and dimensions that I want. I'm thus increasingly pondering going on some sewing course. This makes me interested in the linked website in theory, but after a first glance, I seem to find it lacking in a number of ways:
- For starters, the "zero to hero" path outlined does not seem to bring me all the way to customizing and then hopefully designing my own gear (they don't have a pattern for a messenger bag as far as I can see). I can see a set of pre-made designs that I would need to buy (at prices that seem steep to me, when compared to actual off-the-shelf non-DIY products), but I'm not sure what I'll learn from them and how far it will get me (even if I were ready to invest) if what I'm interested is doing what would be actually my own gear (and not just reproductions of pre-made designs).
- In the materials page I don't seem to see an entry for "Cordura", although I noticed they mentioned using "Cordura" in at least one of the designs (a backpack). That seems internally inconsistent, and especially as someone who'd be learning from scratch, I know nothing at all, so need explanations for everything. This immediately makes me worried what other places in the website may have other knowledge holes I wouldn't be able to overcome. A forum/community could possibly help me ask around when I'm struggling, but I don't seem to see one mentioned.
- I found a list of webbing methods, but molle/pals seems not there, which is surprising to me again.
Not being from the US, does anyone know of an online resource/community where I could try and learn enough to design my own messenger bag with molle/pals webbing and sew it from Cordura?
I was humbled by just how complex sewing can be for me as someone who up until recently only experience with sewing was mending rips and buttons by hand. That is to say, I have a lot to learn when it comes to applying sewing technique to patterns, and while designing patterns might be somewhat orthogonal to that, I hope I'll get to do that as well, but you're right, this website, at least for now is not about designing your own patterns, but rather about making your own gear.
I have zero experience in designing patterns, but as for the tools, I've heard great things about Valentina, an open source tool that has been also forked as Seamly2D (last time I checked Seamly2D seemed less maintained but that's all know).
As to the cost, I just checked to make sure he didn't change that some* patterns are free. The newer ones have for a pretty typical price for sewing patters as far as I can tell.
* The free patterns are for fanny pack, running belt, tote bag, stem bag as well as the stuff sacks and the zip pouch
Cordura is really hard to sew with (it can break a lower-end machine), and also surprisingly expensive even as plain cloth, so I wouldn't normally recommend it to beginners, which is what this site is about.
Good to know, thanks! Then that's something I'd definitely love to see explained on the website :) ideally with a clarification how to progress into it at some point. That said, the machine I bought a while ago is a vintage mechanical one, so presumably tough. Also, per @almog's sibling post, I just found https://old.reddit.com/r/myog/wiki/index which may be a good starting point & community for me to explore.
Cordura is a trademark name for a family of fabrics.
This site has an entire page on technical fabrics, which explains their properties with sufficient detail to continue more in depth research elsewhere if needed.
If you can’t determine how the Cordura you have in mind is different from the described samples, how do you know it’s the best fabric for your bag?
Please note I mentioned I'm a complete beginner, so I don't know how fabrics differ and in particular what does Cordura mean in detail. Thus that makes it something I would hope a page aimed at beginners would explain. Notably, a different website (https://pangolinswithpacks.com/the-definitive-guide-that-you...) linked from the r/myog wiki (https://old.reddit.com/r/myog/wiki/index) that I found in the meantime (thanks to comments from others here) does seem to wonderfully clear this out for me, and something like this is in fact what I would love to see on a beginner-friendly website. Until then, all I knew was that the stuff I bought in the past that was advertised as made from Cordura was super durable.
Did you first try searching for Cordura to figure out what is? Typing that single word into any search engine should point you to Wikipedia within the first few results.
Seems like you’re imposing requirements fora solution without understanding the problem space.
Your approach is like choosing a specific microcontroller you want to use before understanding embedded systems fundamentals. Or choosing a JS framework and being upset an “intro to frontend” tutorial isn’t centered around that specific tool.
I read the Wikipedia page for Cordura before, and re-reading it now I still find it opaque and not helping me understand what it actually is, or how it differs from non-Cordura. Whereas the page I linked above definitely helps me more.
Notably, I can totally understand a person that knows absolutely nothing about programming could come to me with a question of: "How do I create a website from scratch that would use React?" I would not start by answering them with: "Did you even try googling up what React is?", because I'm quite sure they wouldn't understand the explanation as presented on the internet. I would love to instead explain why they don't need to worry about React yet, and to show them a quick outline of a progression to get there, respecting that the decision to chose React or not is theirs in the end. And also tell them of some alternatives that they might want to explore instead of React at some point, and why.
My recommendation for a beginner would be to buy a backpack you like and sew the webbing on. Get a bunch of nylon webbing and sew a bunch of bar tacks to create attachment points.
Edit: I've done this by hand sewing hard points onto a canvas bag. Ymmv with a machine or other material
It is oriented around starting beginners on making their own packs. They have a good shoulder bag pattern that would be a good place to start if your goal is a messenger bag.
- For starters, the "zero to hero" path outlined does not seem to bring me all the way to customizing and then hopefully designing my own gear (they don't have a pattern for a messenger bag as far as I can see). I can see a set of pre-made designs that I would need to buy (at prices that seem steep to me, when compared to actual off-the-shelf non-DIY products), but I'm not sure what I'll learn from them and how far it will get me (even if I were ready to invest) if what I'm interested is doing what would be actually my own gear (and not just reproductions of pre-made designs).
- In the materials page I don't seem to see an entry for "Cordura", although I noticed they mentioned using "Cordura" in at least one of the designs (a backpack). That seems internally inconsistent, and especially as someone who'd be learning from scratch, I know nothing at all, so need explanations for everything. This immediately makes me worried what other places in the website may have other knowledge holes I wouldn't be able to overcome. A forum/community could possibly help me ask around when I'm struggling, but I don't seem to see one mentioned.
- I found a list of webbing methods, but molle/pals seems not there, which is surprising to me again.
Not being from the US, does anyone know of an online resource/community where I could try and learn enough to design my own messenger bag with molle/pals webbing and sew it from Cordura?