Make Your Own Confederate Haversack

Haversacks are a genuinely useful and necessary piece of equipment in your kit.  For beginners reading this, a haversack is a durable cloth bag with a shoulder strap that was carried by every soldier on both sides during the Civil War.  It is an integral part of your accoutrements that is used to hold rations, and occasionally small personal items (this practice wasn't common, due to the amount of grease from the rations that would soil anything placed in it).

All haversacks in the Union army were issued by the government and were much better made than Confederate ones.  To make one yourself is a VERY ambitious project because each haversack is made of tarred canvas with a leather strap and a muslin liner inside.  With this in mind, I won't be giving instructions on how to make one of those! 

This haversack in this article is a Confederate haversack that was modeled after an original in the Museum of the Confederacy.  Confederates made their own haversacks at home, so they were generally more rugged and varying in degrees of quality.  People made them out of whatever tough fabric they had hanging around the house, so the appearance of them was extremely irregular.  Here are my instructions for making a haversack.

Project: Moses Alexander Haversack

Difficulty Level: Novice

Materials: 1 half of a yard of heavy canvas
               thread
               1 wooden or shell button

 

Download haversack.cwk (DR).pdf

Download the file above for a template of the dimensions of the pieces you will need to cut out for this haversack.  All dimensions are given there.  Spread the canvas out on a table and measure out all of the pieces so that you can cut them out.  It is a good idea to make pattern pieces out of paper before you cut the fabric just to be exact. 

Once you have all of the pieces cut out, take the largest piece and fold it in the middle so that it looks like an envelope.  Fold the sides in about a quarter of an inch and sew the sides of the piece together so that it makes a bag with the pointed part as a flap at the top.  Take the diamond-shaped piece and sew it to the point of the flap on the inside.  On the flap, fold the edge in about a quarter of an inch on top of the diamond-shaped piece and sew it.

Cut the long strap piece so that it will reach from the right side of your lower back, over your left shoulder and to your right hip on the front.  Take the long strap piece and fold it lengthways in thirds.  Sew the two halves in the back where they meet together so that you create a long tube.  Once you have a tube, turn it inside out so that the seem doesn't show.  Iron it flat and sew it to the back of the bag.  For strength, make the stitch on the strap in a square shape with an x through the middle.  That way, the strap won't pull off.

The last thing that you need to do is cut a buttonhole on the flap in the middle of the diamond piece.  Sew that and put a button on the front of the bag so that you can close it.

Comments

[John 69th New York]

Will, you may have read this already but storing anything aside from food in your haversack is aside from being inauthentic, a bad idea. The soldier on campaign carried up to three days worth of food in his haversack. If, after stuffing his haversack with rations, he still had room for bibles, cards, and photographs, the grease covering his food would destroy his other belongings.

[william]

Good point. However, what I have found is that Bibles, cards, and the like were wrapped in cloth or put in poke sacks before being placed in the haversack. This might not have been done by ALL soldiers (due to cloth shortages etc.) but it seems like it was a fairly common practice.

[Pvt. Ben Miller]

I know a guy who used barn paint and linseed oil mixed, and painted his haversack with it. I don't know,just trying to help with the water-profing.

[Pvt. Ben Miller]

I forgot to say add mineral spirits to take the stickyness out.

[John Seever]

Can this pattern be used for a militia reenacting or just as a confederate one?

[William]

Technically, such items were usually home-made, and often used in civilian life before the outbreak of the war. So yes, I think this will probably do for your impression.

[sam]

i made one out of denim is that still period