I take bag ideas from sketch to pattern to finished, field-ready product. Expedition packs, running vests, travel bags, duffels, slings, and one-off commissions, built on industrial machines in DCF, X-Pac, Ultra and Cordura.
Matt Founder and sole maker, Red Paw Packs. St. Petersburg, Florida.
Featured commission
The client designed every feature around a Denali expedition; I turned that brief into a pattern and a pack. It was big enough that it wouldn't fit on my sewing tables, so the build called for a different workflow from start to finish.
It has since gone on two expeditions on the mountain.
Custom commissions and product designs from the last two years. Each one started as a conversation about how the bag would be used.
A true running-vest strap system that hugs the chest, with eight vest pockets including a phone pocket on the right strap, plus two large exterior pockets with quick-access openings.
Dual hipbelt pockets with color-coded tabs, one vest bottle pocket swapped for a slim zip phone pocket, and two upper side pockets, one slim and one pleated with a drawstring top.
A fully separate laptop compartment, padded around the entire perimeter, added to my everyday pack design.
A full-featured 40L thru-hiking pack with a carbon fiber hoop frame.
The Front Range 40L in Coloring Book print, one of the most requested looks, with a split front pocket for organization.
The print is my own photo of El Capitan in Yosemite, printed onto Airwave 1000D. I built it to haul product overseas for the Danish Outdoor Festival and loaded it with 40 lbs.
A modified version of an existing pattern, used to test a stack of newer fabrics together in one bag. About six hours from cut to finish.
A sling I prototyped for a trip to Iceland, then refined into a small production run. Wears crossbody or on the waist.
At the client's request I increased the pack's depth to bring it close to 50 liters of internal volume, keeping the rest of the design intact.
A second Front Range for a returning customer: an all-black pack with robin egg blue webbing accents.
Pattern work
A client asked me to recreate a travel bag that was no longer made. I built a new pattern from a used original, then made my own sample before building theirs.
Hire me for one stage or the whole thing.
Turning a use case and a rough idea into a bag with the right volume, carry system and pocket layout.
Original patterns, modifications to existing designs, and patterns reverse engineered from a sample.
Sewn samples you can load, carry and test before committing to a design.
Limited runs of a finished design, built to the same standard as a one-off.
Fixing or updating technical bags that deserve more miles.
Home-sewer PDF patterns with instructions and full-length video walkthroughs.
Fabrics I work in regularly: Dyneema Composite Fabric (including custom prints), X-Pac, Challenge Ultra and UltraGrid, Cordura, Spandura, Venom, Monolite, stretch mesh, and Hypalon reinforcements.
Send me what it needs to carry, where it's going and any sketches or reference bags. I'll reply with questions, a plan and a quote.
