Sewing with pet screen

Hello, everyone.

As many of you will recall immediately, last summer while on the Camino del Norte, we had a bad day, and DH was injured. We concluded, after reflection, that both of us need to be using hiking poles.

Poles have tips--little rubber ends that screw on so that if you're using them to keep from falling on slick pavement, they don't go "click, click, click" and also don't make holes or catch in pavement that is, like some asphalt, a little bit rough. The tips are not large, and I became worried that they would fall to the bottom of the pack and be unfindable--totally a word, guys!--when needed along the trail.

Thus the pole tip bag was conceived.

Tip bag, closed.

Tip bag with tip sticking out of opening.

The little bags are about 3"x3" in finished size. The chief difference between these and your standard boxed-corner utility bag (like a dopp kit) is that these have an overlap on the top for the Velcro closure. They were made of pet screening, a sturdier version of window screening that can be found in one or two colors at the hardware store (it's used to screen windows that pets scratch on as it's resistant to the damage caused) or many colors online at sewing/crafting shops. I have seen a bolt of black pet screen on the Utility Fabrics shelf at my local JoAnn store as well.

The blue fabric is ripstop nylon that was on hand, and the Velcro tape was also on hand. Stash usage! (Well, the pet screen was stash as well--we have pets.)

The idea with these little bags is that we will tuck them into the top zipper pocket of our packs, or if the tips inside are wet maybe we will hang them from a loop on the side, and when taking the pole tips off to walk on dirt trails, we will put them into their very own place so they don't get lost.

(Links go to examples of the thing described. The fabric may have been purchased at Fabric.com or the local JoAnn store instead, but these links were handy to illustrate with.)