I’ll be getting a Patrick Murray starter set soon, and as it doesn’t come with a bag cover I was thinking of making my own. Can anyone give advice on how to do that? I’m pretty good at sewing, but perhaps there are considerations I haven’t thought about? I’ll outline a few of my thoughts.
Velvet seems to be the most common, based on my web research (I’ve had little contact with actual instruments as of yet). Velvet seems rather expensive, though, and I was actually thinking about doing something more interesting than the single-field-of-color thing anyway (I’m interested in really making this mine).
David Daye ships his bag kits with corduroy for the bag cover. This sounds a little more interesting to me, just because it has a more texture to it.
It seems that it’s best to use fabric that has some texture to it, to help prevent the bag from slipping out from under your arm. Both velvet and corduroy seem to satisfy this requirement. In the case of corduroy it seems like you’d want the grain to be parallel to the fold (aimed toward the neck of the bag).
I’d guess that the bag cover should be sewn just a little bit larger than the bag. This would guarantee a minimum of slop that might otherwise be awkward in manipulating the bag while playing.
Here’s an interesting notion… a denim bag cover? It would certainly be distinctive. You could do something to fray the rear edge, causing a sort of bad-boy analogue to the fringe I’ve seen on many bag covers. Finish it off with an acid wash treatment and you’d have a pretty distinctive bag cover
You could always go to WalMart and buy a six-pak of teeshirts and a few boxes of Rit dye. Then tie-dye to your hearts content. Just use the neck and arm holes for the chanter and bellows and no sewing is required.
That should give new meaning to a bad boy attitude.
If you are not an experience seamstress, velvet will give you a lot of trouble; it does not hold together well and is very difficult to work with. My fiance uses “Interface” to re-enforce it for my bags. This is like another layer of stronger fabric that you iron onto the back of the velvet. It is really tricky to make the bellows hole (need a starfish pattern on the inside to ensure the velvet does not rip. Mine are made with zippers, making them easy to remove for dry-cleaning.
If you want a beautiful bag, we could arrange something custom made for you.
If you can’t sew (it’s worth learning, if you don’t), you can always cut out the fabric, pin it and hand it off to a friend that can (or go to a tailoring shop/drycleaning shop where they do tailoring) to finish up the edges according to your specs. It does help if the fabric has some texture/grip to it. A modern naked bag typically has good grip to it without any cover.
I can sew very well, actually, though most of my experience is with kites (ripstop nylon sail material – very slippery and you can’t use pins) and I’ve also sewn a couple shirts and many minor repairs. I once even sewed a new zipper into a backpack. Now that took some maneuvering.
Anyway, I was just looking for suggestios on things like what fabric to use, how to form the hole for the blowpipe, whether to leave the back open (isn’t that how GHP bag covers are done?), where the frill traditionally goes, how tight to make it to the bag, and any other considerations I hadn’t thought of already.
Virgil: thanks for the offer, and thanks for the tips. I definitely want to do this on my own. Making it myself is something to help the set become truly mine. Kind of like when I got my bicycle, it wasn’t really mine until I started putting stickers on it and stopped worrying about the paint job
I made the bag I used to use on my Lambe set from silk velvet… it was fine, did the job.. but the best stuff is a velour (sp?) material, the type that would be used to make heavy curtains and which doesn’t have a long… hair, the only way I can think of describing it at the moment (long night lastnight.. friend visiting from Ireland).
If you do use the silk stuff it is worth taking notice of which way the hair goes… the grain of it if you will. It will be very slippery and won’t stay up under your arm if you do it the wrong way. You will want the grain to be in such a way that it’ll grip your t-shirt and arm… this is very difficult to explain at the moment… maybe I’ll revisit this later
I have started making bag covers myself recently. I am doing sort of a Utilitarian cover for GHB’s. At the moment I am doing them with Desert camouflage.
To get things right, I recomend doing one in a plain fabric first. I simply laid down my bag on the fabric, and traced the shape, then took a new synth bag which hadent been tied in yet, and traced over the stock hole thingies. I then cut a circle where the holes are, then put it over the bag to make sure the spacing is right. I keep an unsewed cover around to use as a pattern.
I cut circles with a rotary cutter (fancy pizza cutter) for the stock holes. Sewing the sleeves onto a circle shape is no mean feat, no matter what type of machine one uses. I decided to complicate my life, and use a serger. I make two ‘laps’ around the circle. Double serged with a 4 thread overlock stitch… I seriously doubt the stitches will ever come undone. (it took me 30 minutes with a seam ripper to undo one on purpose..)
For fringe, I would recomend the more expensive fringe The thick and lush $4.50 per yard stuff rather than the scraggly $1.50 per yard stuff. (bu thats just me) I also attach fringe with a serger, this time with a 4 thread flatlock stitch (do not look for this stitch in the manual, it doesnt exist) After that, I run a triple stitch (3 stitches through same hole) , in such a way as to hide the chainnette part of the fringe, making a ‘seamless’ transition from fabric to fringe.
Ston :make life easy fer yoursel..Good velvet curtains from a thrift/charity shop would cost ye next to nothing=its good recycling.
Instead of putting sleeves around the stocks simply cut a piece of iron on repair fabric,iron it to the inside of the bag cover before or after ye sew the edges together, then cut a simple star(2 cross lines) from the outside.Finished effect looks every bit as effective as a sleeve and takes about 50 seconds to do 40 for the ironing and 10 for the cutting.Finally the back can be left open or make a flap similar to a pllow case (the bag can be inserted into it).Thats it really.
As for fancy frills etc I find them irkesome after a while they get caught in reg keys etc and start to unravel over time looking a bit shaggy some folks go way over the top but thats a matter of choice(theirs not mine)they started to make an appearance when players went “stagey” for public performance and kinda caught on.
If you want to be really DIFFERENT don’t bother with em(frills)
Slan go foill
Liam
