Toddler backpack

After I suddenly found out my friend's daughter was turning two last week, I finally had a great excuse to purchase Rae Hoekstra's awesome toddler backpack pattern. I mean... I'm sure there are backpack patterns to be found for free all over the sewing blogosphere, but why get free milk when you can buy a whole cow? Ahem..

(please excuse the crappy iPod pictures.... I finished hand stitching the lining to the inside of the pack in the car on our way there, so I didn't have time to take any pictures with my nice camera first. And I totally forgot to take a picture of the awesome lining and inside pocket!) 

Anyway... I'm a sucker for things that are already thought out that I don't have to measure and guesstimate, so this pattern was a find.

Where we live, there is no Toys-R-Us or anything even remotely similar. The only toys available for sale are crazy expensive, crappy "made in fill-in-the-blank" things that last my toddlers an average of 1/4 day before loosing pieces and parts that really matter, such as the wings on planes, wheels on cars and so on. SO.... whenever I can, I try to make presents instead of supporting the crappy-toys industry.

Here's my daughter modelling the backpack. Gotta love how much it makes her look like a "big girl"!

So I made this backpack for little Savannah. The pattern calls for about two yards of piping, and Ay! There's the rub. Because where do you get piping in Guinea-Bissau?  Answer? No, I haven't found any yet. But I did find a string formerly used to tie a mosquito net in place, and it seemed the appropriate thickness to make some piping. Trouble was, it was only about a yard long. So once I'd finished making the first yard, I had to go looking for more string. And found none.  Then it ocurred to me that my clothes line (with metal wire inside) is about the same thickness, so there I went, cutting down a yard of clothes line to make more piping. When sewing the piping to the fabric I had to watch carefully not to sew into the metal wire and break the needle. Ah, the adventures of living off the JoAnn grid!

Linking up to "What I wore Sunday"