Travel Messenger Bag Tutorial

For our recent family trip to England, I became obsessed with making sure that my two little guys had enough to keep them occupied on the airplane. In the weeks before the trip, I collected fun projects, books, and toys for them and decided it would hold their interest even more if they each had a brand new travel bag to put everything inside of!

The result is this messenger bag tutorial!

The inspiration really all began with this electric vintage pillowcase I found at a thrift store. Of course I forgot to take a photo before I cut it all up, but here are some close-ups:

…and I pulled this vacation themed fabric from my stash that I would use for the pen pockets:

I made a strap shoulder-carrying version for my elder…

and a backpack version for my younger. The backpack version has a shorter pocket depth to fit his smaller pens and, unfortunately, a lower placement of the front flap (which you won’t see in the tutorial because I discovered after making this one first that I can’t fit the pencil in the pocket in front of the magnetic closure…duh!)…