3 Free Backpack Patterns by Miko Craft

Backpack creations by Miko Craft...

For someone who regularly claims not to like backpacks, I've actually made more bags of that style than I ever expected.

There was the Summer Sling from Sew4Home. There was Cloudsplitter's Summit Pack. There was this Convertible Backpack/Sling Bag from JSDaily. There was even this partially failed project from some forgotten YouTube channel that I managed to rescue (somewhat).

In early March, hubby and I finalized plans for a vacation to Cape Breton Island and Ottawa. (It'll be our third trip out to Nova Scotia and we are hoping for better weather than what you see here from our first trip.)

Not great Cape Breton Island weather...

After all details were in place – getting arrangements made felt like a full time job for a week – I began to think about making a new bag to bring on the trip. Because we might be stomping around quite a bit, I thought that a small backpack would be the best choice, providing the option to go totally hands-free without obstruction.

[Oh, and if you're wondering why I needed a new backpack with all of the previous ones in my possession, I wanted a double strap setup. The only ones I had were the convertible one – which I found a bit cumbersome to use – and the somewhat rescued one, which was just too small and certainly not my best work to select for travelling.] 

Thus I began my search on YouTube on March 27. Within an hour or so, I had seen enough to know the style I was looking for. It was then a matter of whether I could find something gratis versus paid.

This was a paid pattern that I found on Qting Craft Studio's channel:

I like the shape (image courtesy of Qting Craft Studio on YouTube)...

Unfortunately, even if I wanted to pay for the pattern, it was impossible to find. She has a link to a Facebook post from where she sells it, and with me not having a Facebook account, I couldn't even scroll far enough down to see it.

However, I got the feeling that even if I had access to FB, it wouldn't be easy to find, because almost half of the comments from the past year are from people asking about where to get the pattern. In a reply to a similar comment from two years ago, the creator asks the person to email her. Is it just me or is this a horrible way to sell sewing patterns?? (It's not as if the channel isn't active; she continues to post new videos.)

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Fortuitously, my search led me to Miko Craft's channel, where I ended up seeing the absolutely perfect backpack.

image courtesy of Miko Craft on YouTube...

This is called the Eggsy Backpack — and just by the name, it obviously has the rounded shape that I was coveting.

Let me take a moment to salute Miko himself for all that he does and provides on his channel. He is superbly meticulous about everything – to the unexpected bonus of providing free digitized patterns – and he makes everything seem so easy to do. Within a week, I had subscribed (I don't do that very often) and scrolled through his back catalog of videos.

In doing so, I came upon this, which I will definitely bookmark for future consideration:

image courtesy of Miko Craft on YouTube...

It's another Eggsy, but in a decidedly masculine sling bag style. I can totally see myself making one of these for hubby down the road.

I also noted this backpack as a possibility:

image courtesy of Miko Craft on YouTube...

The Abbey has a couple of dual purpose side gusset pockets that come in handy for water bottles and more, but did I want to have those and lose out on the overall sleekness of the Eggsy? Not to mention that snazzy looking (and very functional) front pocket with the double zippered access? (That I immediately saw holding travel docs, maps, and stuff like that.) What do you think? 😜

The title of this post refers to three backpack patterns, but let me assure you that Miko has many more. In fact, I did a search last week and came up with well over twenty. There's even an Eggsy #2 with different pocket structures... but it's not better than the original, in my humble opinion.

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With decision made, here's how I went about creating my own Eggsy. First step was to transfer most of the video instructions into written format. The idea of repeatedly watching a video is neither effective (for me, anyway) nor efficient (for almost everyone, there's the annoyance of the inevitable ad breaks), so my first task is always to take screen shots and paste them into a Word document.

Here are my first two pages:

images courtesy of Miko Craft on YouTube...

I had a slight worry at the printing stage of whether the gusset piece was long enough. It indicates printing on A4 paper (which is slightly longer than North American letter size paper) and even though I used tape to create a long enough page and set my printer to expect A4, the template for piece F still printed incompletely. Luckily, Miko's templates feature a diamond shaped "join," so as long as you approximate the completion of that diamond correctly, you'll be okay.

While I knew what fabric I was going to use for this backpack, it took me days to get around to cutting. (Definitely not my favourite part of sewing.) Then I had to mark up my Word doc with my planned modifications. (What's the point of making a bag exactly as designed??) Among my planned changes were more pockets, a different take on the straps altogether, and an interior water bottle harness.

I'll go into detail about my "Eggsy Experience" in a future post. In the meantime, go check out Miko Craft's YouTube channel. There are some high grade freebies to be found if you're into bag making.

Oh and a reminder – you will obviously be inclined to skip ads when you're watching a video for the first time, but please do let the entire thing run uninterrupted at some point in the future if you've found value in the video. It lets the creator earn some ad revenue and costs you nothing.

'Til next... 🇨🇦🍁