Everybody quotes the ounces. Almost nobody quotes the weave.

Why we exist

Canvas bags are bought on a weight figure and a picture, and the three things that actually decide the outcome — weave, shrinkage and base construction — are on nobody’s quote.

All three are settled before anything is cut, and none of them is expensive.

Duck beats plain, at a lower weight

Duck canvas is double-filled: two yarns together in the weft against one in the warp, so the cloth packs far tighter.

A 10 oz duck resists abrasion and tearing better than a 12 oz plain weave, and costs less to make and to ship. We will happily sell you the lighter cloth.

Combed or carded is a real choice

Combed cotton has the short fibres removed before spinning — smoother, stronger for its weight, and it takes fine print more cleanly.

Carded is cheaper and fuzzier, and it is genuinely the right answer for a heavy utility bag. Both go on the quote by name.

Untreated cotton shrinks, and the print notices

Three to five percent, nearly all on the first wash. Enough to pull artwork out of square and drag a panel-edge print onto the seam.

Pre-shrunk sanforised cloth, or artwork sized with the shrinkage allowed for — decided before the screens are made, not after the reorder arrives.

A flat tote is a sack

Load one and it sags into a U, everything slides to the middle, and it will not stand up on a table.

A boxed gusset gives it a footprint. It is the change that makes a canvas bag feel like equipment.

The base seam is where bags actually die

Bags get set down on pavements, floors and car boots, and a raw internal seam abrades from the outside until it gives way.

Binding it with tape costs very little, and it is the repair we are most often asked to make on bags built elsewhere.

What we will talk you out of

The heaviest cloth when a duck weave at two ounces lighter is the better bag. Printing onto already-waxed canvas. Calling waxed cotton waterproof. Undyed cloth for a sunny window without warning you first.

And checkout carriers — we make no paper bags and no non-woven polypropylene, and we would rather send you elsewhere than sell you the wrong material.

How we work

Who we serve