When you are bringing dozens of logs a day into the house for the wood stove, it is nice to be able to carry as many logs as you can at once. A fabric log carrier is great for that as you can carry quite a few logs without taking up any space inside. The old log carrier finally bit the bullet, so instead of buying a new one we decided to make our own using the old one as a template. Amanda is a bit of a fabric hoarder, so we were able to make the project completely with items found around the homestead.
Materials
thread old broomstick or wooden dowel of a similar size (1″ diameter) cut into 2 18” pieces 33”x40″ sheet of heavy-duty fabric 2 strips of the same or similar fabric 55″ long and 3.5″ wide
You can get the materials needed on Amazon.ca:
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Instructions
The carrier needs to hold a lot of weight so you need very heavy-duty fabric. We re-purposed some denim. To add extra strength double the fabric. Fold your fabric in half, good sides together, and sew a 1/2″ seam around all 3 sides, leaving a 4 inch gap on the last edge.
Pull the fabric through the gap so that the good side of the fabric is facing out.
Iron all the seams and the fold. For the opening, fold the fabric edges in and iron. Ironing makes the seams much easier to work with, and allows you to do much less pinning. I do not have a big enough ironing board so I am ironing on an old towel on the kitchen counter.
fold in and iron edges
Top-stitch twice along the two long edges. Since I am using denim I used a jeans top-stitching thread (orange-yellow) I had left over from another project. To get the look of jean top-stitching, I did the first stitch at 1/2′ and then a second using the first row of stitches as a guide.
use your last row of stitches as a guide
For the short edges, before you top-stitch, fold over 2 inches and iron.This will hold the wood pieces so if you are using a larger/smaller dowel adjust to accommodate.
fold over and iron the top and bottom sides to create the slot for the wood pieces
Now sew the fold down with two rows of top-stitching. My sewing machine was having trouble with the many layers of fabric so wasn’t able to go all the way to the edges. I re-enforced the stitching with a few rows going the opposite direction at the edge so they wouldn’t unravel. I did this type of re-enforcing in all the places where I felt that there may be a lot of pull on them.
re-enforce the stitching for added strength
Now we have finished the main part of the log-carrier. For the handles I sewed the two strips of fabric together on both ends making a very large circle, sewing the good sides together. Make sure there are no twists.
Fold the fabric in half lengthwise and iron the fold. Open the fold and take one half, and fold it in so that the end of the fabric touches the fold; iron and repeat on the other side; pin where needed. This will hide all the cut ends.
sew together and fold in the edges of the strips of fabric
Top stitch two rows. I ran out of the jean top-stitching thread so I had to make do with another yellow thread half way through.
top-stitch on both sides
Lay the circular strip on the bottom of the body of the log carrier and pin so that each side is 5″ from the edge, and so that there is the same amount hanging off each end, these will be the handles. I sewed these on using two rows of a blue jean thread. Make sure you do not sew all the way to the edges, stopping below the folds for the broomstick pieces. Re-enforce the ends of the rows.
attach to the bottom of the body of the carrier and sew along the whole length except for the pockets for the wood pieces
Slide in the pieces of broomstick and you have a functioning log carrier. Send someone else to gather the wood; you did enough work for the day.
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