These instructions are for a case for a two piece take down longbow, and should work for a bow up to 68". Obviously, many shooters do not shoot this type of bow. The measurements can be readily adapted for use with a 3 piece bow. Simply measure the longest limbs you will put on it and add 6". This will give you the width measurment for the large center panel. It will allow 2" for the seams and 2" extra at each end of the limb pockets. Use the center section, which is used for arrows here, for the larger riser. If your limbs are recurved, rather than longbow, you will have to adapt the pocket size accordingly. If you make separate bow socks for two sets of limbs, you could use this three pocket design to hold the riser and both sets of limbs. Alternatively, you could adapt to two pockets for the riser and one set of recurve limbs. Don't be afraid to make adjustments to meet your particular needs.

This is a close up of the selvedge at the edges of the fabric. You can see how much more tightly woven the fabric is on the selvedge edges.

Spread out, 60" fabric is big. I laid it out on Ann's cutting table, selvedge to the top. You can use the floor, a piece of plywood over two sawhorses, a ping pong table... whatever you've got. I then used a chalk pencil and laid out my 38" x 44" rectangle, which you see here. I laid in seam edge markings 1" from the bottom and both side edges. No seam marking is needed at the top, or selvedge edge

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Next I cut out a strip 18" wide. This will make the two trapezoidal flap pieces. This strip will have selvedge at each end. The wide edge of each flap will be at the ends of the strip, so that the wide edge of the trapezoid will be selvedge. Cut the two ends of the strip off at 19".

Put the selvedge edge at the top. Find the center and make marks on the bottom edge at 6" and 7" from the center.

Brace yourself. This picture and the next one are optical illusions produced by camera angle! You're just going to have to wrap your mind around it and trust me. The material here looks like a trapezoid. IT ISN'T... it's a rectangle. The camera makes the farther away top look narrower than the bottom. We're going to make it a trapezoid, though. I've drawn lines from the 7" from center marks on the bottom to the top corner, and another line 1" in from that. These are, again, 1" seam lines.

OK, I've cut off the wedges at the sides. Camera angle now makes what really is a trapezoid look like a rectangle. This piece actually measures 18" at the top, or selvedge edge, and 14" at the bottom. It's 19" deep.

Note: I didn't get a picture of it, but you will want a 1" seam line drawn on the bottom, as well. No seam line is necessary on the top, or selvedge edge.

Here are the three pieces taken upstairs to my sewing room and laid on a smaller table I use there.

Now you need to start playing with your sewing machine, as described above. Use the wedge pieces you cut off of the flaps and set your tension.

Seam on the left has too much top pressure. You can see the top thread lying on the material surface. Seam on the right I tried an adjustment but wasn't happy with it, though it's lots better. Middle seam was getting there and I adjusted again about halfway down and you can see that toward the bottom of the picture I'm getting a nice stitch.

I wish now that I had seamed the big piece first, since it has square corners, and I wouldn't have had to show you this little step first, but I didn't. I did the two trapezoidal flaps first. On these, you will make seams on both sides and on the narrow bottom edge, but not on the top edge, which is selvedge. I mentioned above that what we will do is fold the edge into the 1" mark (see next picture) and then fold it over again. Because there is an angle to the edge, this results in a sliver sticking out. I chose to cut off a small corner on an angle to eliminate this. You can see the piece I cut off here. Do the fold and you'll see what I'm talking about.

OK, here you see me folding the edge in to the marked line. You then fold again.

With lighter material, I'd pin the whole seam line. With this heavier canvas, that is not easy, or necessary. The fabric is stiff enough that if you "press" a fold in it by running a pencil down the edge, you'll find the seam fold is well marked and easy to control.

What I've shown so far is just fine for long seams. However, they meet at corners. This leaves you with a choice. With lighter material, I just let them fold over each other. With seams folded in as I've shown, you have three layers of fabric in each seam. If you're machine is happy to sew over six layers (many are not), there isn't a problem, and that is what I normally do on my quilts. However, with this canvas, six layers is a lot of thickness, so I wanted to use what is called a "mitered corner". The reason I don't normally use these is because I am lousy at doing them neatly. However, they are nice and I'm going to show you how to do them. I very highly recommend that you practice several on a piece of scrap canvas before you do one on your case.

The basic idea is that you fold the corner up at a 45 degree angle and cut off the tip. You can then fold the corner over and kind of make a seam within the seams where the two sides meet. The trick is cutting off the right amount so that the end result is neat. I don't often get it perfect, but this is a bow case, not your daughter's wedding dress...

The first couple of these I did, I started the seam and sewed until I was close to the corner, then dealt with mitering the seams. After a couple of poor ones, I started using more care and folded and pinned them before I started.

This particular one worked out quite well, so you can kind of judge how much to fold and cut from these two pix...

The two sides nicely folded in and pinned.

Second side folded in and I'm ready to start the seam on that side. On the ones I pinned, I didn't have to stop the seam. I just turned the material and kept going.

After I completed the seams, I went back and sewed over the corners. This one was separately sewn seams.

Here is one where I sewed one side seam and then just turned the material and kept going on the other side seam.

Here is a finished trapezoid folding panel... three sides seamed, selvedge edge at bottom.

At the selvedge end of the main section, draw three lines... one 4" from the end, another 6" from that one, and another 4" from that one. These are the lines you see here.

On the seam edges, (incidentally, the seams go to the inside), make three marks... one 3" from the last line, one 4 1/2" from that one, and the last 3" from that one. These are the three marks you see on the edge above. You make these marks on both sides. Draw a chalk line between the marks.

Now place one of the folding flaps on the side of the main piece. Put the selvedge edge of the panel INSIDE of the seam. You're going to sew this piece on with two lines of stitching, but made inside the folded seam of the main panel, so that your sewing machine will only be sewing through two layers of material.

Position the center of the flap at the center of the 4 1/2" section you just lined out in the previous instruction. You should find that the flap is roughly 4" wider on each side than the last three marked out sections.

Pin the flap in position...

and sew it down with two parallel lines of stitching on the selvedge. Note how I have rolled the material so that it will go through the sewing machine's somewhat limited space. If your machine is happy sewing over the folded seams, you can do so, but it'll be fine to just start at the folded seam on one side and stop when you get to the seam on the other side.

Obviously, repeat for the other side.

Fold the bottom (selvedge edge) of the main piece up and pin it along the top chalk line. Try to line up the marks on the edges of the main panel with the lines drawn on the folded part of the piec and insert some pins along these lines. The spaces between the lines on the part you folded up are wider than the spaces between the marks on the flaps. This is to make tube space for your bow pieces and the arrow tube. Stick your bow pieces and your arrow tube in the pinned spot and try to see how they feel.

Uh, oh! This bottom bow piece tube is clearly looking too tight. OK, feel the other two "tubes" and adjust your pin rows until you're satisfied. I ended up with a bit more folded fabric than I needed. My arrow tube is still pretty loose with both limb piece tubes a nice easy fit. I think this came about because I used the same measurements here that I did on the first case, which was of about four times heavier and much stiffer material. This material had more give to it, hence, more total space for fit. This isn't a problem for me. I'll find a slightly larger tube for the arrows and it will comfortably hold my rolled up Lakota quiver with arrows in. Alternatively, you could sew a second seam about 1/2" from each of the center seams that hold the arrow tube, tightening that section and perhaps making the case roll up better. Interesting thought...

I lay my glove, the string and a brace in...

and fold the flaps over. Note that because the flaps are sewn on inside the seams, and because they are a bit wider than the space they have to cover, they close up the tube openings, so that pointy limb ends don't try to slither out some open edge.

This seems like a good place to show you the machine I chose for this job. (I have 30 some machines to choose from!) This is a Singer Model 15, circa 1915 to 1920. The treadle frame is an industrial size one that is completely restored and fitted with a wonderful industrial size working top, for maximum area. It will accept either home size machines like this one, or full size industrial machines. The black plastic panel at the left of the machine comes out to lengthen the opening for the larger machines.

OK, we are going to fit five additions... a handle, two tie straps, and two D rings on the ends to accept a snap on shoulder strap. These pieces are made from the nylon web strap, which is heat cut to the lengths you want. You're not likely to have an electric heat cutter, but a soldering iron or the heated up blade of an old butter knife will work fine. On the handle, the ends are folded back under, so that the sewing is actually on two layers of webbing. On the end D rings, you again have two layers, simply slipped through the rings and stitched down.

The tie straps are loose on both ends. On one end, the strap is slipped through two D rings. The other end is simply the burnt off end of the strap. They are sewn to the case for about four inches.

Roll up the case with the contents inside and figure out where you want the handle. You don't want it right on the end of the material. Here you can see that I have positioned it such that there is about 3/4 of a roll of material past the handle to roll.

Here's a shot of the case opened, showing the positioning of the attachments. The D rings for the shoulder strap are even with the placement of the handle. The stitching for the straps is actually past the handle, closer to the edge. You can see the chalk lines where that stitching started and ended.

This shot shows my positioning of the attachments from the inside

Here I am stitching the shoulder strap D ring. The webbing is doubled and I am stitching a square around the inside of it. I stitched down one edge, left the needle down but lifted the presser foot and turned the material around the needle, lowered the foot again and stitched across, repeated the turning and stitched down the other edge, repeated the turning and stitched along the edge of the D rings.

If you look a bit further back you can see one of the straps and how I stitched it. Again, a stitched square (rectangle, actually), turning the material. The actual stitching covers about four inches of the the strap, leaving a short loose end with the D rings, then the longer strap to go around the case.

You can see here what I was talking about when I described getting all the material under the sewing machine arm.

Now, if you have reverse on your machine, which you most likely do, instead of that turning, you can just stitch up and down the area where I made squares... but it won't look as good.

Practice on some scrap webbing.

For anyone who is not familiar with D ring fastening, here is a quick review. Two D rings are attached to one end of a strap.

The other end of the strap is fed first through both D rings.

Then the end is fed back through only the second D ring. When you pull the end tight, the strap is quite secure.

If the flapping tail bothers you, tuck it under.

Here's the finished product. You may note one error... I actually should have sewn the straps on in the opposite direction, so that the tails pointed down when you are carrying it. This is relatively minor, and as you saw above, I can tuck the tails in. If it bugs me too much, I'll take out the stitching from the back and resew them, but that's probably one of those things I'll never get around to.