The Sailor's Ditty Bag

Often the first project given to a new sailmaker's apprentice was the sailor's ditty bag. It covers a lot of the same sewing technique and craft of working a full size piece of canvass. I'm wanting to learn to sew my own sails. Rather than just jump right in and ruin a perfectly good canvas tarp, I'm opting to learn at a smaller level, on smaller projects to mess up. This being the first of them.

Working from The Sailor's Ditty Bag by Frank Rosenow, The Arts of the Sailor by Hervey Garrett Smith and photos found online, I sketched out the cutting dimensions onto a yard of olive green cotton duck canvas. This isn't quite a traditional ditty bag. I liked the olive fabric better than the off white and I simplified the lanyard a bit.

I next cut out the pieces with my wife's fabric scissors and stitched an overlapping vertical seam. Then rolled down the top edge and sewed that seam and then sewed the bottom on. The hard part was the seven grommet eyelets, I turned the bag inside-out and sewed six along the top and one on the bottom to take the lanyard toggle. The toggle I cut from a piece of hardwood that I carved a point onto during a camp trip back in the mid 90s. The point of which, I cut off to make a wooden fid from later. The lanyard, not a traditional one, I made from some cheap line I had in the garage. I'll likely redo it later with some three strand cotton rope.

All that's left to do, is monogram my initials onto it. I'm still undecided if I'll go cursive or sans serif. I'll post again when I figure it out.