Making a Zero Waste Camera Lens Case
One day, Mr H came home from the second hand shop with a camera lens that fitted our teen’s camera. She uses the lens but it still lives in the shopping bag from the shop.
I was thinking about this when I saw Danielle Elsener’s Zero Waste Travel Case, and I thought it could be adapted to a lens case. So I bought the pattern, and requested access to the sewing guide. The pattern is contained in a zine, part of a collectable set.
The travel case has a top handle, a zip that unzips the whole bag flat, and interior pockets – a patch pocket and handy zipped compartment.
Rigid fabrics are recommended, and I was determined to use things we already had at home. We had some denim so I used that. To protect the lens, some sort of padding was in order, and I used some offcuts of bed quilt left from a coat.
To fit the lens and the padding, the case needed some tweaking in the dimensions department, so I made a paper one first to check….
…and tried it with the lens wrapped in two layers of quilt.
I ended up reducing the length of the case by 1″, and the side height by 1/2″. I left off the interior pockets, which didn’t affect zero waste.
It was quite straightforward to sew. I used a gold zip which had been unpicked from something else, and gold topstitching thread.
The ends of the zips have neat triangular gussets.
However, my bag was not so neat inside. Danielle finished hers off nicely with bias binding, but since I was lining this bag I didn’t. But I didn’t think the denim would fray so much – I ended up neatening with zigzag but if I were to do it again I would overlock each piece before starting.
For the padded lining, I thought long and hard as there’s no lining pattern. I decided to cut out another bag in two layers of padding, and bias bind the edges that touch the zip.
This sat neatly inside the denim bag.
When the case is zipped shut, the ends of the lens are protected by the padding.
I sewed a handle on one side.
And two D-rings on the other, in case Teen wants to add a carry strap.
The Verdict: very happy with this. It’s a great pattern for a travel case, and reasonably easy to tweak for other uses.
Cheers!
Cool! You definitely have a great second hand shop near where you live!
I need to sew two ukulele bags for my sons but I think I’ll keep the challenge to “low waste”, zero waste seems hard to achieve in that case! And first, I have to finish my “official” removable pocket, we’ve more than doubled the temperatures outside and I need it to weat with my dresses.
Yes, it is a great shop – it never disappoints. It’s only open 2.5 days a week, and there’s always a queue at opening times.
Best wishes for the ukulele bags, sounds like a fun project.
Making a note of this as I like bags with gussets to prevent stuff falling out on opening, and I’m intrigued by the bags, like this, with spiralling zippers. This sounds like it has scratched your topstitching itch (not red or orange!) and exercised your puzzle solving skills with the lining. Can’t think which coat those off cuts might have come from
And Mr H has regained a shopping bag!
Think you would like making this, Wendy. And you travel more than I do 🙂 (Danielle said it’s still technically a travel case – for when the camera lens travels from one room to another!)
Yes, thoroughly enjoyed all that topstitching, as usual.
this shape of bag also looks perfect for a hand-stitching kit — so that needles and thread spools don’t go rolling everywhere (especially for those of us who, ahem, sew in bed….and don’t want to stab our bedmates..) thanks for showing us through your process of customizing/modifying! the combo of denim and quilty goodness seems very structured and protective and perfect for this purpose.
Yes, it’s big enough to fit sewing scissors and it would also fit a small sewing project as well…and is a handy size for sitting on a bedside table 🙂