My lovely wife bought me a stainless steel Swedish Army trangia cookset last year and today, as I admired the soot on the pans, I thought to myself "Self, you need to make a bag for this thing to keep the rest of your kit clean!" And so, that's exactly what I did. First thing was to source some material. Being a tight Yorkshireman, I wasn't going to line someones pockets for a bit 'o' cloth, so I rummaged about and found an old pair of jeans I was saving to make char cloth, and it just happened that the leg was just the right size! Out came the scissors and off came a chunk of leg, between the worn out knee and the crotch. Two benefits of using a leg were that it was already stitched into a tube which saved time and effort, and the tapered shape makes it easy to get the cookset in without faffing.
Next, from the bit below the knee, I marked out and cut an oval for the base and duly pinned and stitched this in place.
Now for the top. I was going to use eyelets for the draw cord but I couldn't find the setting tool so instead, I used the button stitch feature on the sewing machine to make two adjacent button holes. I then folded the top edge over and pinned and sewed this down to form a tunnel for the draw cord.
Nearly there! Final task is to turn it right way round and thread the draw cord in place. This is easily achieved using a bit of wire from the shed. Fold a little eyelet in the end (makes threading it through easier as it won't snag) and then thread it through one eyelet and round to the other. The cord is then passed through the eye in the wire and pulled back through.
All that remains is to knot the ends of the cord and test it.
Result? A great success! I now have a durable bag to keep my cookset in for the cost of a few pence of leccy and a bit of time!
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