Bag patterns and some thoughts on their shapes | Jeff Luke

Originally shared in the Traditional American Craftsmen Facebook Group, Jeff Luke has given us permission to publish his informative article on I Love Muzzleloading

Prompted by a question by Doug Engh, I thought I'd share some details on size of the current pouch I'm working on, as well as some thoughts on various historical pouch styles, shapes and sizes.

At the core, most original 18th and early 19th century hunting/shooting pouches were relatively small, only large enough to fit ones hand into in many cases, and primarily based on one of four basic shapes.

-The D shaped pouch: Think of the letter D, turned 90 degrees clockwise. Sometimes wider than they were tall, or vice versa, the D shaped pouch was likely the predominate type pouch across any era or region of the country.

-The square pouch: This basic shape is perhaps the easiest to build and affords a bit of added room in the corners. This shape also lends itself well to a single piece pouch, where one piece of hide is folded to serve as the front, back and flap.

-The heart shaped pouch: Generally thought to have originated in Eastern regions of the country, pouches of this shape were typically taller than they were wide and kept the contents at the bottom and easily accessible due to the tapered shape.

-The kidney shaped pouch: As the name suggests, these pouches were rounded at the bottom and tapered toward the top. This type pouch provide a bit more volume overall and were often seen accompanying a smoothbore or fowler, affording additional space for the essential things needed to shoot either shot or round ball in a single pouch.

In addition to overall shape, pouches are generally constructed in one, two, or three piece configurations with the front, back and flap being the primary components. Pouches of each of these construction methods and a multitude of modified iterations between these have been done in the various shapes as well. Add in turned versus flat sewn, welts or none, gussets, and flap hinges and it becomes clear that many different types of pouches likely roamed the frontier. Flap shape is almost a topic in and of itself perhaps. We'll save that for another day...

The pouch shown here could be classified as either a tapered D shape, or perhaps a "less exaggerated" kidney shape. I don't have a true pattern for this one, but here are some photos that should be useful for those who might be interested in a building a similar pouch. This one will be a three piece, hinged flap, with a tapered gusset. I always mirror the front and back panels on a two or three piece pouch to ensure that they align nicely when sewing. The front panel is typically scalloped to allow for easy access. On a turned pouch, I typically make the flap the same width, or just slightly narrower than the width of the back panel at the top before turning. This will leave roughly 1/4" of extra width to the flap on each side after the main pouch body is turned. Have a great weekend folks!