Hello! I’m super excited to share about making the Jack Tar bag with Minerva. This is my first time working with waxed cotton fabric and it’s quite lovely!! I had a few other ideas of bags to make with this fabric but I decided to start with the Jack Tar bag as Merchant & Mills is both the pattern and fabric designer.

I used two different Merchant & Mills waxed cotton fabrics for this project. I had no problems sewing any of the seams on my sewing machine. I tested three different thread colors & I did have an initial tension issue with the gold thread. I took the top thread out of the machine, re-threaded it and the stitches following that were just fine.

My mods:
Pockets
I’ve seen lots of other makers’ Jack Tar Bags online. If you haven’t browsed the #jacktarbag yet, it is quite fun to see all of the other versions out there! I saw that some versions added pockets on the outside of the bag. I decided to only sew pockets on the inside of the bag but I added a second pocket to the second lining piece (for a total of 6 divided pockets inside the bag).

The pattern recommends to fold the top of the pocket over twice toward the right side and top stitch in place. I folded the top of the pocket toward the wrong side twice and stitched in place.

I noticed that the pattern has you snip notches at the two pocket divider locations. You lose these notch locations when you fold the top and bottom edges over. I got around this challenge by using a seam allowance guide built into my sewing machine. I used a Janome Skyline S9 (or Atelier 9) for this project. I measured the pocket divider lines at 5½” from the edge. I set the seam allowance guide to 5½” and sewed the pocket divide seams in place on each side. I also added a tack stitch at the top of each pocket divider line, to reinforce these stress points.

Strap
For the shoulder strap, I cut out a grey suede base that I had in my stash.

For the rivet punch I used a 2.5mm hole punch. I used a rubber mallet and jewelry anvil (that I had on hand) to set the rivets.


Magnetic Snaps
With this bag being very large, I added two magnetic snaps instead of just one. I centered the snaps at the recommended 1½” area below the top edge but I centered each of the two snaps at the handle center lines.

The pattern recommends using fabric square behind the snaps to reinforce the stress points. I used 1½” squares from the leftover waxed cotton fabric scraps at these inner snap locations.

I enjoyed the process that the directions walk you in attaching the base to the lining and outer fabric. You first stay stitch, clip and then sew the bottom oval in the lining and then in the outer bag pieces.

I learned a few things through the process of sewing the lining in place first. I would recommend sewing the lining bottom first to practice (as the pattern recommends). In the lining, I missed that you staystitch inside the seam allowance not at the seam allowance.

I was going to hand stitch the lining opening hole closed but the fabric got too difficult to manage the thicknesses of four layers of this fabric by hand. It was easy to bring this seam to the sewing machine and then machine stitch it closed. I found as I turned the bag right side out, the seam in the opening hole ripped the threads open a bit. I forward and back stitched each seam of the opening but I should have made this hole larger (to turn the bag right side out).