to land on your laptop when you crash your bicycle; I put my seams on the outside. I’d like to say this
it’s softer than your spine and, despite thoughts to was to make it look cool (which I think it does) but
the contrary, is less valuable than your collarbone. it was really because I forgot to turn it inside out
However, now I have to pay for laptops myself, so I before I was done. When I finished sewing the thing,
thought I’d try and make it last at least a year or two. I realized the bag needed pockets for batteries, pow-
Browsing the laptop bag offerings at the store, they er packs, passports, and a toothbrush. So I placed
a couple of squares of neoprene on
Neoprene can be hand- the inside. Because it is stretchy,
it’s pretty tolerant of low accuracy.
I reinforced the sides with old poly-
stitched, which creates a ester hiking bootlaces. When tied
in a loop, they fastened perfectly to
wonderful Frankenstein the shoulder strap I found on some
old luggage that had been offered
aesthetic. to the gods on the side of the road.
To clip it all together I used a couple
of child-restraint belts scavenged
seemed to offer far too little padding for my liking, from abandoned shopping carts. Apparently, it’s
and all looked like an advertisement for laptop theft. illegal to use parts from abandoned shopping carts.
I had some old wetsuits — the kind with tears in all The result is lush, soft, bouncy, waterproof, and
the wrong places, which prevent you from being able orange. All things I like, plus it will stretch to fit two
to pee inside the wetsuit to keep yourself warm. notebooks and a burrito. I got overzealous and even
(Admit it, you do it too.) built a matching iPod case that has protected my
music machine in dozens of falls.
HOW TO MAKE A LAPTOP BAG While I don’t think it’s sufficiently wonderful to start my own O’Neill-type business, it is a fun bag,
Wash and deodorize the wetsuit. Gentle detergents, gets noticed (by hipsters not thieves), and makes a dash of vinegar, and warm-water hand agitation me feel like I foiled the landfill again. All that, and it does the trick nicely. only took about four hours to make.
Wetsuits don’t have a lot of flat straight pieces, so This article also took about four hours to write you’ll see mine is made from strips cut from the least and paid me enough to buy several laptop bags. worn pieces of the old suit. I don’t have much need for False economies indeed, but I’d wrestle the auto-measuring — I just eyeballed and oversized the panels threading mechanism happily to do it all again. a little to allow for the seams and ended up with a stretchy case, like sexy spandex for your computer. Saul Griffith thinks about open source hardware while working
Neoprene can be hand-stitched, which gives with the power-nerds at Squid Labs ( www.squid-labs.com). a wonderful Frankenstein aesthetic, but it’s a lot faster to use a sewing machine, and you’ll be able to make more mistakes without feeling guilty about starting over. Most strong home sewing machines will do the trick; just make sure you use a large denim needle and thick polyester thread. I have sailmaker’s Dacron thread, which is perfect.
If your machine is weak, you may need to manually help the poor little motor by winding with the machine on the down-stroke and letting it find it’s own way home coming back up. This is slow, but better than hand stitching. If the neoprene is really thick, you’ll get better results by lifting the sewing machine’s foot completely to accommodate your wad of material.
If you don’t surf or dive, ask a buddy who does. He or she should be able to set you up with a thrashed suit.
You can recycle some of the 5 billion dot.com mousepads that still plague us — they’re made of neoprene, too.
On eBay, you’ll find plenty of wetsuits being sold by people who liked the idea of surfing after watching Endless Summer and gave up after swallowing a pint of ocean the first time they got in the water.
You can also buy new 51"x83" sheets of neoprene from places like foamorder.com, but that sort of defeats the purpose.
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