As I mentioned in one of my recent posts, I didn’t do much sewing last year.
But one project I did manage to finish is this roll-top backpack.
I’ve always liked roll-top backpacks. If you don’t have much in your backpack, you can roll it up small. But you can also use it when you want to carry a lot.

The last time I was on a beach vacation, my goddaughter saw a roll-top backpack that she really liked. Luckily for me, the quality of that backpack was very poor. That gave me the idea to sew one for her.
I used the same waterproof canvas as I did for the cat fanny pack.

https://justelly.com/2026/04/05/diy-fanny-pack-for-cat-lovers/

I knew very early on what colors I wanted for the backpack.
I also knew I wanted graphics that reflected her hobbies: traveling and photography.
I spent ages thinking about what I could do. And then, of course, it took a while to find the graphics I had in mind online.
I found the road sign and the backpack pretty quickly. But finding the stick figure with the camera took a while.
I modified the road sign a bit and added the names of the cities she’d been to.

The backpack measures 24 by 14 inches. So there’s definitely enough room to fit a camera kit inside.

When rolled up, the backpack is almost half the size, hehe

Here’s a close-up of the graphic.
I had asked the employee at the copy shop to thicken ALL the black lines. Apparently, he forgot to do that for the backpack in the graphic. Unfortunately, the lines there are thinner.

Years ago, I saw this fabric online. And of course, I DIDN’T buy it because I didn’t have any use for it in my projects. 😀
I searched for it all over the internet and finally found it in Poland. It was crazy expensive, but it was worth it to me. This fabric was the perfect finishing touch for the design on the outside.

I think the backpack turned out great ❤