Where I am from, everyone has a fanny. Take that however you like.
Or at least, everyone has something that functions as a fanny pack, even if they refuse to call it that. Sling, waist bag, crossbody, travel pouch, European carry-all, whatever. The name is negotiable. The utility is not.
A few years ago, Heather asked me to make her a small travel purse. Not a fashion thing, not a statement piece. Just something that could hold the basics and stay out of the way. I sketched it out on cardstock drawing heavily from other packs that I had seen, cut some fabric, and sewed two versions. One for her, one for me.
At the time, it felt like a quick project. Useful, but temporary. Something we would take on a trip and then forget about when we got home.
We took them to Europe. For me, it became a flight bag. Passport, phone, earbuds, the things you want close but not in your pockets. For Heather, it became her bag. Her purse. Her daily carry. Whatever name fits, it stuck.
When we got home, I just assumed it would get shelved. It did not. It went out the door with her to work the next day. And the next. And the next. That was the moment it stopped being a travel project and quietly became her bag.
Two (three?) years later, that original bag is still in rotation. Every single day. It has been on planes, on hikes, through cities, into cafes, and back out again. It has been stuffed, underfilled, overfilled, spilled on, rained on, set down on questionable surfaces, lost and then found again, used, abused, ridden hard and put away wet, and generally treated the way a real piece of gear gets treated. No ceremony. No special care. Just use.
That makes it, without question, the most heavily used piece of Cracked Asphalt gear in existence. It is certainly showing its age at this point, which seems to have made no difference at all.
There are coffee and booze stains worked into the lining now. A faint smell of sunscreen that never quite goes away. The zipper pull has been re-tied once or twice with whatever cord was nearby at the time. I have watched it get dumped out on café tables, park benches, airport floors, and the tailgate of the car while someone searched for a lip balm or a parking ticket or something like that. It has been half-zipped in a rush, clipped on crooked, tossed onto the passenger seat, kicked under it, and retrieved again without comment.
At some point it stopped being something I made and started being something that simply existed. It shows up in couples photos without being invited. It sneaks into reflections. It is always already there, hanging by the door or slung over a chair, quietly loaded with the small things that make a day work.
Passing It Along
The long stretch of daily use combined with a bit of time on my hands is what finally pushed me to digitize the pattern. Not because it needed refinement or fixing, but because it had already proven itself by being boring in the best way. It worked and it kept working. Nothing clever broke. Nothing essential went missing.
The Towpath pattern is the result of that process. A very ordinary bag, shaped by real use instead of hypotheticals. It is small, on purpose. Structured enough to behave, flexible enough to disappear when it should. It can be worn around the waist, slung crossbody, or thrown over one shoulder. The carry style is chosen up front and sewn in, because committing to a decision is often better than pretending everything needs to be modular.
I called this post “a perfectly fine fanny pack” because that is exactly what it is. Not revolutionary. Not precious. Just good enough to earn a permanent place in someone’s life.
The pattern is available for free. No gatekeeping. No tricks. Print it, cut it, sew it, and then actually use it. If it ends up living by your door for a few years, even better.
That is how we got here.
