Laptop briefcase

[EfrainBG]

   Hi, everyone!

   I just wanted to share the latest project. I just finished it this morning.

   I Promised my wife a while ago that I would make her a bag for her laptop, but she wanted something fancy to show off in her meetings, hence the black finish.

   I started looking around for design elements that would suit her tastes and started making the patterns. I was surprised at how quickly I finished this thing once I got past the coloring and treatment stage. I spent basically a couple weeks coloring and finishing the leather prior to even drawing the patterns on the side I bought because I wanted a uniform look around the bag. My process was:

   - black stain
   - neatsfoot oil
   - 2 layers of black dye
   - Kote
   - cleaning and buffing with Chamberlain's #1

   I waited a full day between those steps and I loved the results.

   I used 0.8 mm red Tiger Thread (which is a delight to work with)

   I sturggled a bit with the burnishing and didn't quite get the shiny look I was after in the first place, but I changed my mind very quickly when I hit that matte look.

   Anyway, I'm very happy with the end result... it has definitely room for improvement, but I willtake care of those details when (if) I manage to sell one of these babies by way of my wife luggin' it around.

   I hope you like it!!

   Cheers!

[AussieMade]

Looks really good, love the mix of roman numerals and modern for the date on it,

[RockyAussie]

It looks pretty good and I think your wife should be proud to have it on her side. I think possibly the middle gusset stitch could have come a bit closer to the corners but am not sure. In all other aspects I can see very professional. Regards Brian

[Thor]

Very clean work. Well done!

[bikermutt07]

That's a really great looking bag. Nice job.

[EfrainBG]

thanks so much, everyone!! As I said, I'm very happy with the results. I still have a couple of issues to attend before actually starting to sell this baby (a very feasible possibility now that my wife has started to show it off, by the way).

@RockyAussie: I had some serious concerns about this variable, so I made extensive testing (2-3 runs, actually) making some corners out of several scrap pieces I had around. The idea was to create a suspension of sorts with the gusset for the contents of the bag, so the interior flap is about 1 inch narrower and about 1/2 less tall than the front piece (1/2 inch on each side in contact with the gusset) to try and avoid the rib in the middle from touching the ground. In the end, this feature actually gave the bag some structure and allowed for it to stand on its own very nicely. The curve in the corners is about 2 inch radius, while the one in the middle was about 1 5/8. This diference ended up pulling the gusset corners in helping to that suspension thing I blabbed about... hehe

[Djw872]

Beautiful bag! I really like the front flap closure design. 

[CJJ]

really nice, well done!