Bowling Bag from Tandy pattern

[TheCyberwolfe]

Folks, I'd like you to meet Frank.

Many years ago, a buddy dragged me onto his office's bowling team after one of their original members bailed on them, and one of the perks of joining the league was getting my own custom-drilled bowling ball. Ever since, I've had the ball sitting in the closet in a ratty old backpack as a means of carting it around. This has gotten exceedingly more boring as time wore on, so I decided to build something better. Luckily enough for me, Tandy released one of their old bag patterns a while back, so I didn't have to engineer the thing from scratch.

For the design I turned to my more-artisticly-talented daughter, and requested something suitably 50's Rockabilly, which seemed like a solid choice.

Full assembly was actually pretty simple, once I finally convinced myself to do it the hard way (the pattern pack is designed for simple lacing), but the hard way involved sewing it together inside-out and then inverting it when complete.

I'm here to tell you that the toughest fight I've been in these past 25 years has been today's job of turning a bag made from 7/8 oz Herman Oak right-side-out. The cats heard some new words while Frank and I wrestled him back onto the outside of the bag. Got a new use out of my stitching horse - used it to push up the middle while I pulled down the top.

For those of you who may be interested in the full tale of the construction and the things I learned, feel free to head over to my leather blog for the three-part series:

Bowling Bag Part I

Bowling Bag Part II

Bowling Bag Part III

Otherwise, here's a few pics of Frank

 

 

Edited December 18, 2017 by TheCyberwolfe

[Bolt Vanderhuge]

Very cool. Very cool indeed. Thanks for sharing.

[DJole]

Wonderful story! And a nice bag, too. Love the "retro" design!

[bikermutt07]

That is awesome.