Tag: sewing

June 13, 2024 – Not Your Grandma’s Sewing

June 13, 2024 /

You might not think so, but kids are bound to pick-up on some things. Growing up in a traditional household, my mom was always into sewing. She would make us a shirt from the fabric of our choosing each school year. In first and second grade, it was a fabric that had a gold or silver thread in it. When I was in third grade, I had a shirt with a Millennium Falcon embroidered on the back. Unfortunately, the work took so long to do I outgrew it before I could wear it, so my brother got it. It did win a blue ribbon at the county fair.

I suppose that it is probably still true, but back in those days winning at the county fair also came with a cash prize. It was $3 for first, $2 for second and $1 for third. When I won two first place prizes for my rabbits, I thought I was rich. That is a little back stage baseball on our kind of life.

There was always a sewing place in our home. I was too young to remember before the utility room was converted in my first house but there was a dedicated sewing room in my second house. As we got older and busier, the sewing projects got farther and fewer in between for my mom. Hemming pants gave way to occasional mending and patches on our Boy Scout uniforms.

As kids do, sometimes we held onto those patches a little too long and needed them sewn immediately. In those cases, we had to do the work ourselves. No problem, I talked earlier about taking home economics in middle school and sewing our own bags. I thought nothing of it.

In this stage in our lives, I occasionally find that my wife has a few friends over on the weekend for a taste of normalcy. Given the impromptu timing and lack of planning, I often find myself heading to the basement to tidy up and stay out of the way but close enough to be nearby. It should be no surprise that I have a a myriad of things going on generating the clutter. As a result, I turn on some music and get to work. In these days of lack of control, having organization over my domain makes me happy.

One of the things that I had on my to do list was mend my son’s insulated pants. I had to of course tidy up the space around in order to have enough room to work. I was feeling in a darker mood that night. My music started with System of a Down and worked toward Metallica. Then I decided to crack a beer. When I was all done I was looking at the aftermath and I couldn’t help myself. I could never see my Grandma drinking a beer and listening to Metallica while sewing.

I have kind of had that moment that I had when I was in college. I needed tools to work on the car but I had nothing, including money. Dad always had everything that I needed. The same is true about sewing. It was always around and available, all the tools and supplies. I never imagined that I would be shopping for replacement needles and thread and other supplies. But, now it seems like I need to stock up in this area too.

Truth be told, my work is hack job level. I broke several needles and I had to watch a video on how to load a bobbin. It would win no ribbons at the county fair but it got the job done. I need to spend more time with the machine to figure out how the different stitching modes work and the different nuances. It is just like anything else, it takes practice to get good at something.

End Your Programming Routine: When I rescued the sewing machine from the giveaway pile at my in-laws estate, I only saw the utility of it. That is still my primary motivation. But, I wont lie that I enjoyed my time fiddling around trying to figure it out how to use it. I would like to get to the point that I could sit down and not have to watch videos to get started. I would also like to get to the point that I hope nobody notices how it was done. Like I said, hack level work.

October 18, 2023 – Origins of Technical Gear

October 18, 2023 /

We all know the brand names like North Face, Columbia and Patagonia. Today, they are as much a fashion brand as they are/were technical gear manufacturers. But, what is the origin of those brands? They started out as somebody trying to do something better. And when I say somebody, I really mean a person making or modifying a piece of gear to suit their needs. When I was on my hunting trip, I saw this sleeping bag that my dad was using and it triggered me to memories from the late 1970s.

I don’t think that it is a secret that I grew up in a family of traditional values. That also include stereotypical roles and interest as well. My mom was a sewer, she still dabbles a little today but nothing like back then. Somewhere, somehow she ran across this company called Frostline. The premise was that a consumer could purchase a kit and sew their own technical gear.

I was pretty young, but I remember taking a trip to Spokane to pick up this kit. Spokane was about eight hours away. I am pretty sure my dad was working there as well. We picked up a pair of cowboy boots that he had made out of elk hide and went to the Frostline store. We also went and saw where he traditionally elk hunts along the way. It was a long, three day weekend of driving basically.

Frostline offered kits to make sleeping bags, tents, parkas and other things. This was the days where the transition was being made for wool and canvas to nylon and Gore-Tex. This sleeping bag wasn’t the only thing my mom made. She made rain gear for my dad, vests (I still have mine, but my 2nd grade me quickly outgrew it) and sleeping pads that I used my entire youth in Boy Scouts.

By today’s standards the gear was heavy and maybe even sub-standard in performance. It was however revolutionary for the time. Obviously, it was good enough to still be around today. I was surprised at how many recent articles were around praising the kits. I think it is pretty niche subject but there was certainly staying power in people’s minds.

There are two primary motivators to make your own gear. One would be to save money and the other would be to have something unique or custom. Of course, our side of the fence was to save money. But, the truth is some of this stuff was stuff I had never seen. We had one sporting goods store in town and this was my first synthetic, mummy bag.

That’s not to say that if we lived in Jackson Hole or Vail or some other outdoor oriented town that type of stuff wouldn’t be so unique but I think that this was a way to get stuff that really wasn’t on the market. You have realize that before the internet, if you didn’t know something existed and where to get it, it wasn’t exactly easy to find.

Today, I am not sure people would put that much effort into building their own gear. $150 might seem like a lot of money to pay for a sleeping bag, but the truth is by the time you put 20 – 30 hours into it, it doesn’t seem that insane to pay that amount of money.

There are definitely parts of me that wishes this company was still around. I think that it would be cool to go on a trip with a backpack that you have made. I still occasionally noodle the idea of what it would cost to build my own gear brand since I can never find exactly what I want. Like, I want a backpack that holds my laptop, fits under the airplane seat, has a sunglasses pouch and holds a water bottle with full access to the bag interior and not a lot of extra pockets and zippers that add bulk, cost and little functionality.

My current bag has most of that, it doesn’t fit under the seat well and it has tot many small pockets. It seems like the more pockets you can claim, the more the price goes up but the less value that they have. All of those protrusions and separations diminish the overall capacity of the bag itself and then it turns out you can add much less stuff then the size would indicate. I have other thoughts on other items like range bags and such, but that’s a topic for another day.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a little known piece of Americana that I thought would be fun to share. It is neat that it is still getting used today. This country was built by people wanting to build the better mousetrap and this is one example. Why do you think I have a sewing machine in the first place? It gives me ability to do some of my own modifications if I ever spend the time to figure out how it works.

January 25, 2023 – My New Sewing Machine

January 25, 2023 /

Maybe my time reading Self-Reliance magazine is starting to rub off on me as I have been thinking about getting a sewing machine. I was thinking that if I ran across one at Goodwill for $20 or so, I would get it. After sewing my kids Boy Scout patches on by hand for years, I am kind of tired of doing it.

My mom sews, so this is nothing new to me. Growing up, there was always a fully outfitted sewing room. Mostly, I asked mom to do this because she was much better than me, but I could do it in a pinch. In fact, as part of the sixth grade survey we had 18 weeks of Home Economics where we all sewed a basic drawstring bag. What I am trying to say is that it is not that far off that I could sew something.

Recently, we cleaned out my in-laws storage unit. It was either donate, trash or keep. I think that we ended up keeping too much and throwing out too much but it was what it was. I ran across this sewing machine and decided that this was going to be mine (if none of the heirs wanted it, which they didn’t). This means that I really need to my sofa table done so that I can put this sewing machine where my stereo is currently.

Now, I am not planning on doing anything really major but it sure is handy to have around when you have three or four patches to sew on. The truth is, my boys are of the age that I am ‘letting’ them do it. If they ask for help, then I will but I am no longer just taking initiative to sew on their patches. This is something that is really their responsibility with uniform compliance. I used to feel some degree of judgement but not anymore, they are plenty capable.

When I was in grade school, my mom would sew us one shirt. We got to pick the material and it was the shirt that we would wear for school pictures. Generally speaking, that shirt first went to the county fair before school started. So, we had to wait and visit it before we got to use it.

Going to the fabric store was really painful as a child. It seemed like we were there forever and there was definitely nothing a child was interested in, except maybe the scissors isle. There was one year, I picked a fabric for my shirt that had a silver thread running through it. I think my brother picked a fabric that had a gold thread running though it. We thought it was pretty cool.

I think that my last year, I was in fourth grade. My mom made a shirt where the Millennium Falcon was embroidered on the back. This would have been right before Return of the Jedi came out. It was the peak of Star Wars mania (for me at least). Unfortunately, it took too long to complete and so the shirt went to my brother because it didn’t fit me when it was completed. It did win a blue ribbon at the county fair.

There have been some times that I have been tempted to try and build a backpack or bag. For instance, I cant find an exact range bag with the features that I want. With both of my boys shooting trap, I just don’t have enough space for everything that we need on a weekly basis in my range bag. Wouldn’t be cool if I could just sew one up? This is probably way too ambitious but it is actually possible. This is how many technical gear companies have started, see a need and fill a need.

End Your Programming Routine: As a alluded to in the first sentence, Self-Reliance magazine has three or so projects that are pretty simple, like sewing a reusable bag out of feed sacks. You know, like the kind you can buy at the grocery store. This is not really about making dresses but a tool that can really be useful. Throughout my adult life there have been many times I threw something away because it was too difficult to mend or repair appropriately. This is a step at correcting that