Running Shoe Sling Bag

Upcycling Project is finally completed and turned out pretty well. I am fairly happy with the final product, the feedback, and critique from this week. Much of my inspiration for this project comes from product designer, Nicole McLaughlin. She is the queen of upcycling and repurposing old sports equipment and other various objects into mostly clothing and accessories. I have attached for portfolio for reference: https://nicolemclaughlin.com/exploration.

The vision for this project was to create a little handbag out of old athletic equipment I own but no long use. This turned out to be a pair of running shoes that I deconstructed and sewed together to create a sling bag. The aesthetics I based this design off of was Gorpcore, the use of utilitarian clothing for fashion rather than function.

Once deciding on the shoes I was going to take apart, I took a pair of scissors to them. Cutting off the upper/toe box of the shoe and removing the laces. Once having two separate pieces of fabric, I sewed them together at 3 points of contact (bottom, and both sides), which wasn’t ideal on a “industrial” at home sewing machine.