Guitar Bag

Find and print an image of a Fender Stratocaster onto legal-sized paper. Don’t include the fretboard. You’ll use only the body shape as your pattern.

Cut out the guitar shape, and then trace the image onto your fabric. Make sure that your guitar body, lining, and pickguard pieces mirror each other.

Mark the highest points of the body and lining pieces. These are the highest points of the curved horns on each side of the fretboard of a real Fender Strat.

Cut a small piece of interfacing, approximately 2″×1″. Cover this with metallic silver fabric, and pin. Don’t sew it! This will be your bridge, and you’ll sew it directly onto the bag.

Draw a teardrop pattern on 2 small pieces of the same silver fabric, similar in size to your bridge. Sew, right sides together, and turn inside out. This teardrop piece will be your input jack.

Set your bridge and input jack aside.

Pin your pickguard pieces, right sides together. Sew all the way around, leaving a 2″ opening for turning it inside out. Before turning the pickguard inside out, clip or cut around it. This will nicely define the curves. Then turn it right side out.

Position your pickguard on the body and sew, using the image you printed for reference.

To position the bridge and input jack, again refer to the image you printed out. Sew them onto the body, using matching thread.

Cut three 2″ strips of bias tape. Position them on your pickguard. They should be aligned to the bridge, except that the bias strip near the bridge should be slanting. Again, use your printed image as a reference. Sew the bias strips onto your pickguard.

Using tailor’s chalk, mark 6 points on these bias tape strips and on your bridge. These points should also align; they’re the pickup pole pieces and the bridge saddles for each string. Mark another 2 points on the opposite ends of your input jack, and the points near the edge of the pickguard where there are more screws.

Embroider these points with silver thread, using a backstitch or French knots.

Sew the 3 buttons onto your pickguard as the tone and volume controls.

Sew the body pieces, right sides together, beginning and ending at the highest points that you marked. Turn the body inside out.

Sew the lining, but leave a gap at the bottom. Don’t turn it inside out. Before sewing the lining, you may choose to add velcro or a magnetic snap for the bag closure.

Insert the body inside the lining. Then sew the mouth of your bag by sewing the lining to the body.

Turn the bag inside out through the gap in the lining, and topstitch the opening of your bag.

Take a 1″-wide piece of black webbing and fashion it with an adjuster to use as a strap. Sew the ends of the webbing to the back of the bag’s top horns.

Sew up the gap in the lining. Attach your favorite band buttons to the strap, and you’re ready to rock!

There are other ways to create your own guitar bag, and I’m sure you’ll come up with great ideas that speak to your own uniqueness. Add a whammy bar or real guitar strap!

Instead of sewing the individual elements, one alternative is to print an image of a guitar on fabric, then stitch it up to a coordinating backside (or maybe you’ll print the back of a guitar for that piece, too).