The merchant bag

A pouch for the wares of a travelling merchant

An earthy green pouch with a floral pattern, the inner lining being a shimmering purple colour, and with green and purple beads on the drawstring, sitting on a windowsill.

A somewhat swirly and floral patterned green fabric sheet, as well as a folded shiny purple fabric sitting on top of it, that will be used to make the merchant bag.

Circles cut out from the fabric, we have large green circles, smaller purple circles on top ofit, the dual layers of each pinned together, and a smaller circle of green fabric above them all, with the earring bag that we are using as a template sitting on top of them all.

A folded business card sitting on top of the smallest circle of green fabric, showing that this will be used to make a miniature business card holder at the base of the pouch.

The smaller purple circle of fabric, now comlete, pinned to the center of the larger circle of purple fabric, on a wooden table.

The purple circles now sewn together, with the small circle being sewn on to create eight pouches around the circumfrence of it, alternating four small and four larger pouches, with a larger circle about two inches side making up the center.

The large green circle with the tiny green circle sewn into the middle of it, and a green zipper across the center of the tiny circle.

The large purple and green circles mostly sewn together, with a tiny opening remaining that was used to turn it from being inside out to sew the seams to rightside in, hiding the seams inside. The opening vaguely resembles a mouth talking to you, taken for the fact that it's kinda amusing looking, and it's leaning against the sewing machine.

A view of the nearly finished pouch being clamped into the sewing machine, the width of the foot being used as a guide for making the drawstring slot equal width all the way around.

The pouch opened to the maximum, arranged so that it can't open entirely flat, and will always have a bit of a lip to keep items from just sliding out and falling to the ground if opened in my random travels. Hazel the dragon is curled up in the center of the pouch.

The open pouch sitting on a windowsill in the sun, with the dragon Hazel curled up in the center area, and an earring protruding from one of the smaller side pockets.

The closed pouch on the windowsill, showing the three beads alternating green purple green on the ends of each drawstring, the slight pop of purple from the inner fabric visible, and looking generally earthy and magical.

I've always carried a dragon with me, two technically, one personal dragon and one for-sale dragon (so that I still have a dragon for display if I sell that one, also to have my dragon with me), and it's also more or less what my merchant bell is there for, to indicate that you have found a travelling neko cat merchant!

And with that pile of links out of the way, let's get to the build. It's based on a travel earring pouch that I picked up in The Pas years ago, and then is being made an inch or two bigger. Because y'see (sorry, another pile of links lol), I need with me at least one dragon, some earrings (I have more than what's on that page, but I don't plan on taking a photo of literally every pair that I make), a 3 sided Möbius ring, and a handful of tetra orbs just to give away. And whatever else I've been making at the time, aside from the dragons, the random miscellanea will change out here and there. But make it first we must!

Now, I've had this green fabric kicking around for *years*, and at long last, its first use! I went with this nice, earthy-looking green fabric on the outside, and that magical purple fabric for the inside. Originally, I had imagined the inside being black with wisps of gold through it, but being unable to find anything like that, we went with a magical looking purple, which is opposite the colour wheel from green, so that works well (and oh my goodness looks incredible when closed, with that pop of purple at the opening). Basically copying the designs for the original earring pouch, as well as online instructions, we set off to make it.

It took a bit of waiting as I needed to get my sewing machine working, but what ended up happening is that I bought a used, newer sewing machine rather than trying to or paying to service a 50 year old machine of a mysterious brand (which will happen eventually, but this was the far less expensive option). The smaller purple circles were hand-stitched together, which is mainly what had me put it off until a sewing machine could be fixed or bought, and once I had that machine, WOW, like one day. One eight-hour day, with barely knowing what I was doing (it had been at least a decade since I pressed a sewing machine pedal), and it was almost complete!!! We measured and pinned the purple circles together and attached them making eight pouches of small and large sizes, around a central circle as with the earring pouch. On the note of barely knowing what I'm doing, circles are HARD to sew! Oh my goodness, I was getting that thing to go at its minimum possible speed, and even then I was terrified as it ran. So as you can see the central circle isn't the roundest thing in the world, but I decided to go around three times in total, to somewhat equalize the distribution of threading, and add strength to what will see the most of a beating. It'll be hidden by a dragon for the most part anyway, and is barely noticeable after going around it several times so it looks like I was generally just making a wider circle of stability, but we will call it looking whimsical otherwise lol. Barely know what I'm doing, gotta start somewhere, I'm pretty happy with the end result. And the straight lines were excellent, so all is good. I used a ruler and some fabric chalk to plan it all out beforehand.

The green zipper was added to the tiny underside circle, to make a tiny pouch for half-size business cards, just enough for a QR code on one side, and contact information on the other. I'll be making those by just having the same design twice across one business card template and cutting them in half, and that circle was sewn into the center of the large green circle. The two large circles were then sewn together inside-out, leaving a small opening to be able to pull it rightside-in, and a hidden stitch put in to close the last bit. Finally, the drawstring slot was sewn by picking a distance a few centimeters out from the central circle, and then using the width of the sewing machine foot to make the second circle for it, and the eye-holes being stitched around for strength.

We'd picked up a thin, high-quality cloth ribbon for the drawstring, and decided to add some beads to the end of the drawstring to keep the knot from pulling into the pouch slot, and doing a green purple green pattern looks pretty good on them. Gotta say, the purple green combo looks incredible, and I am really happy with how it came out. And with Hazel nesting in the central pouch as the salesdragon, and several earrings added to the side pockets, the merchant bag was complete!

Finished February 15, 2025

Note: I know the adoption scroll won't be with me, the concept is that I can mail it to them after they contact me, or they give me their address then and there after buying the dragon.