painbag

hand embroidery

lots of dangle

surprisingly intact squishies

Featured above is how painbag looks right now.

Painbag (it's a pun) is a project I started around 2015~2016 to keep my small hoard of bread pouches in one place as my desire to collect bread goods really kicked off. I've made little additions here and there over the years but the base is the same: a realistic toast print backpack with other breads sewn on or dangling off. It first began as smaller pouches simply placed inside of the backpack. But it's inefficient to zip and unzip multiple times when you're trying to grab something, especially if I couldn't remember which pouch held the thing I was looking for. Itabags were the cool new trend at the time, so I decided I would instead make an ouchie bread bag and attach them to the exterior. Because it's a little fragile, I've saved it for conventions rather than using it as a daily bag.

One of the less obvious changes is that originally the pouches were just pinned on! I would take them off and rearrange on occassion. I ultimately decided that sewing them on would be best. Some of the items were handmade out of polymer or paperclay, but they were flimsy and broke easily. Some others were improperly attached, so I ended up losing a couple over time. Still, most additions ended up being a fond memory for me! For example, I did the embroidery while working long shifts at a campus computer lab. I remember being so stressed about so many things at the time, but the repetitive task really helped me. The pins were a gift from a dear friend of mine who is always so thoughtful. I bought the toast button at a convention I went to a few years ago. I ended up going with one of my friends who had never been to a con before, and we had so much fun that I realized the ideal con experience is having just one other person to go with. In short, it's a very special bag!

I'm running out of space and I don't really want to do much else to it, but I'm experimenting with adding things to the shoulder straps. The base bag is not especially high quality and the inside is starting to deteriorate a little, and it's hard to clean, but I think there is still opportunity for painbag to evolve.