I had been thumbing through the most recent issue of Craft Magazine a while back and noticed that there was an article on making shoes using an old pair of Chucks. Honestly, I thought this was pretty sweet, but wanted to go a step further, you know making my own toe instead of the rubber one and sewing the shoe into the sole instead of only gluing it (I would later regret the latter, greatly). I don’t have any old Chucks around that fit (this again is another incredibly whiny story about how sweet Chucks used to be and how I have worn the same size for many many years until buying my last pair which fit like clown shoes, errr) so instead I grabbed my lawn mowing shoes and went at them with a box cutter.

Making the pattern for the shoe was fairly easy, I skipped the gusset that the original shoe had and made one long piece that wrapped around the foot and another piece which was the toe and tongue piece. Off to a good start. I decided to make the shoes “super sweet” so I choose the left overs from Sarah’s lovely polka dot bag. I have worn shoes most of my life (and for a good portion of my adult life) so I am a fairly good judge of what fabric would make a sturdy shoe and obviously the cotton/linen blend of the Echino fabric was not going to cut it. As with every other project I start from scratch I grabbed some fusible fleece and some buckram (as US Weekly might say, “Shoes, they’re just like hats) and fused all three together to make a good solid shoe. As you can see I put three vertical stitches at the back of the shoe to force the buckram to curve and giving it shape and I added an extra layer of fleece on the heel for more padding. I used the same combination to make the tongue/toe piece with additional padding on the tongue bit. At this point things are going really well and amazingly quickly.

The next step was to line the shoes, again I used the leftover bag material and cut the shoe piece slightly longer that the pattern piece. I simply edge stitched the right sides together (leaving the bottom unsewn) and pulled it over the shoe. I used spray glue to hold the lining fabric down, this would be the first instance of trouble. I really should have used the Shoe Goo at this point instead of the spray adhesive. While the Elmer’s sticks, the inside of your shoe takes a serious beating that only a probably toxic glue can handle.

On the tongue I did roughly the same maneuver, except I only sewed the half way down the tongue rights sides together and then I stitched on the outside for the rest of the tongue/toe piece. I found that this was the way that my other shoes were constructed and the laces other part of the shoe hides any rough edges.

So, I have my shoe pieces finished and waiting to be inserted into the soles. You can see I used some old Puma soles that were originally white but had turned that color of brown only dirt, grass and grime can turn rubber. This would stand and I attacked with spray paint. Unfortunately, I went to Freddy’s (Fred Meyer, ya’ll) by myself to pick out the spray paint and grabbed what I thought was a really close match to the Cherry color of the fabric. (Let’s be honest if this would have worked it would have been sweet). I went out to the backyard, sprayed those soles down and realized that I had gotten a maroon color instead of anything close to red so it was back to Freddy’s and another can of spray paint in black (labeled, I probably would have bought navy if I was just looking at caps). The soles sat for a day and half and looked alright.

This is where I really start to get into trouble, the soles are off limits and I am wanting to finish. My mind starts to wander and it hits me, I am going to make a sole out of (one guess……) that’s right buckram and then I can just glue it right into the soles. I cut out the shape using the shoe insert and start going to town. I get the sides sewed on and I put the toe/tongue in and realize that I have made elf shoes. Because, as I now know you must shape for your toesies. I immediately lop off the toe part from the tongue and make a larger newer toe out of the lining fabric but with nothing to stabilize it. Failure, now have a pair of really ugly slipper with know shape. My next move is some stretchable pleather from the Despot (yes I drove across town for 1/8 of a yard of fabric). I rip of the second toe and try this. Now I have really ugly vinyl slippers.

Sarah suggests that we make a straight piece to provide a bumper and the space for the toe piece to go over the toes. This is bloody brilliant I think, and I try again. Slightly cooler slippers, but I think it will work. The soles have dried to a point where they are usable. I start jamming and trimming my complete “shoe” into the sole. Awful. It dawns on me (really it should have long ago) that I should just directly glue the shoes into the sole. Who needs the buckram footbed? Out comes the seam ripper and off come the shoes (and a large part of my thumb). I reattach the original toe piece to the tongue (the applique leopards are there to hide this) and start gluing.

It gets ugly, because the glue and the paint are having a chemical reaction that is stripping the paint from the soles and turning the glue black and maroon, plus I neglected to bandage my thumb (if it falls off I have a culprit), which burns. After lots of needless pinning (the goo sets up fast) the shoe actually takes shape and looks like shoes!

I added some eyelets and laced these bad boys up. While the aren’t the prettiest things they are unique. Unfortunately, I should have used a nicer pair of shoes to start because these weren’t that comfortable to begin with, so ripping out the inserts and reapplying them hasn’t done anything to improve that situation.

I am working on a second pair with a canvas liner to give it more strength and shape and hope to have something even prettier and more comfortable.

This was actually an incredibly fun project. It really doesn’t take that much time if you do it correctly, and you gotta love recycling old stuff to make nicer stuff.

This is it, the first jacket that I have successfully made, well not made, as in made on my own, because this was truly a Sewer-Sewist co-production. I did most of the framing and Sarah did most of the finishing, to borrow from the construction vernacular. As you may have read Sarah has had some sewing mojo issues lately, which have somehow worked their way down the line to myself (or maybe it is the weather, I am officially rejecting and denouncing this crappy rainy spring). I had no confidence in my ability to set in the sleeves and needed some help with this, which was frustrating because it sometimes feels like I am going backwards instead of forwards. But, let’s return to that and start from the beginning.

This is one of the few times that I started out with the pattern, Burda 7780 “Coat,” first instead of my usual way of getting inspired by a fabric and trying to make it work with something (like the velvet jeans from last year). I am sucker for both mid length coats and welt pockets (which I would come to regret) and this had both. Like most Burda Men’s patterns that I have made I was happy to find something that had a little more “style” than the other companies’ jackets. Men’s patterns aren’t hide to find, but finding something interesting often is, plus the Burda’s shoulders always seem to fit me well. We pretty much followed the directions this time, opting to skip the lining and instead do “French Seaming” to give it a nice tailored look on the inside, not doing the top stitching on the front of the jacket because it doesn’t look great with the fabric, leaving out the shoulder pads and making a bias cut, two-pat undercollar (which is sweet, thanks Sarah!).

As you may know I love me some velvet and this smokey blue velveteen at Bolt just cried out to be made into this jacket. It has a little stretch to it and a really nice drape. The color is subtle enough I didn’t think it would look too ridiculous to wear around (at least I don’t, hopefully I am not wrong). Speaking of velvet, did you know that you can buy Elvis shoes but finding a Velvet Elvis is nearly impossible. I remember when I was a kid that driving down Cnl. Glenn Highway in Dayton there would occasionally be dudes (and dudes they were) selling giant Elvis and assorted velvets on the side of the road (probably from their vans, but I can’t be certain). Now I am not going to lie here and pretend I thought they were cool at the time, I really thought they were tacky, which is pretty rich coming from a 13 year old with fluorescent Chuck Taylors and striped socks pulled up over my calves.

At the time Velvet Elvi seemed liked something that would be hanging in one of my weird great aunts’ houses, but damn since the Elvis estate has become fanatical in holding onto his image rights we have lost a great part of our campy heritage.

My father is really into neon, pink flamingos and being cool (which some how he pulls off, I have never had this gift), but he has been on this quest for a Velvet Elvis for a long time (probably since the time they haven’t been around). Back when I was in college I spent most of a summer in Turkey trying to learn the language (um didn’t take) and hanging out with my weird friend on the Black Sea. On one of my last days there, I was in Istanbul wandering around the covered bazaar when I spotted the most wonderful Velvet Elvis hanging about one of the stalls. Let me tell you it was magnificent, if it were a fresco in the Hagia Sofia it would have been restored and show off to the world. What did I do in my infinite wisdom? I walked on by looking to find something more authentic to bring back. I gotta say I was quite the dumbass and it’s something my Dad hasn’t forgotten. I have seen them for sale on the internet occasionally, but you gotta buy one of these in person to get the full effect.

The coat, yeah that, what we were talking about, turned out really well. It is incredibly comfortable and walks the fine line between being interesting and being stupid. I used some leftover fabric to make the pockets (er, well Sarah and I made the pockets together would be more accurate. I fretted over making them for a month before I decided to just ask her how to do it) and the paisley pattern peaking out of the welts gives it a nice vintage look. I also found coin buttons at Bolt that were originally chained. Sarah and I both decided that it would look to Sgt. Peppery to use them attached together, so I cut off the chains and used them as normal buttons. The coat has a great fit and I will probably end up making a rain coat or something similar out of a lighter weight fabric for the summer. All in all a very fun project and it was great to be working with the Sewist again on a project from beginning to end.

~Josh

If you’re not familiar with Diane’s fantastic podcast and blog, CraftyPod, you should be. And what better time than right now to check it out? Josh is one of four crafty guys that are featured in CraftyPod #73: Men Who Craft.

You may not know this about Josh from reading this web site, but Josh is actually pretty shy, so I’m very proud of him for being interviewed for CraftyPod. When I told him I was going to post the link to the podcast, he said,

Just make fun of me or something.

Well, I’m not gonna. It’s a very interesting and thoughtful podcast episode, and I hope you all will check it out.

Good job, sweetie!

~Sarah

After much deliberation, we decided to go for it and buy a screen printing starter kit. Now there are a lot of different ways to do screen printing and a lot of ideas of how to do it on the cheap, but we decided to go for the basic Speedball Fabric Printing Kit. If you decide to give this a try (and already I am going to spill the beans and say that it is great fun) a little comparison shopping is a must. The same kit varied in price by 20 bucks (with Michael’s Craft being at the high end). We ended up buying ours at a local independent art supply store, though with even more searching on the internet we probably could have saved a little more money. While the kit isn’t the greatest value in the world in a per ounce basis of the chemicals and ink, it was the cheapest way to get started with out knowing if we were going to like it or do it again. The biggest advantage with buying the kit is the INSTRUCTIONS. I should say that I am terrible at following directions (unless the Sewist tells me something to do), the few time in our lives that we have bought Ikea furniture, Sarah has to interpret things and we have to build the things together (the first time this happened, we were a bit frustrated with each other, but after many years we have settled into a nice routine on these matters). Even my dumb ass was able to print properly the first time around.

The image that I choose to print was a baseball player (surprise, surprise I know). The Library of Congress is a great resource for old images (among many other things) and I found this great baseball card in the American Memory Collection. I have Adobe Creative Suite on this computer because I use InDesign a lot for work and with that have Photoshop and Illustrator for work. After much tinkering with the image I was able to come up with a monotone black and white line drawing (later I found the live trace function in Illustrator which made this go really quickly, yeah I don’t know much about these programs).

We set up our printing station in the garage on an old table.

Something everyone should know about this is it isn’t a tidy process (oh my god, if we had white carpet and I tried this on the imaginary white carpet you would be reading my obituary this week) and you need a sink to wash all of the inks and chemicals and either a table that you can destroy (or “customize) or at least something you can cover the table with.

The first print we did was the baseball print and, amazingly enough, it worked.

A couple of days later we printed AU Eagles t-shirts to celebrate the old alma mater’s first round lost in the NCAA tournament. (These shirts are hilarious. We’ll make sure to post pictures of them, but Sarah’s been sick and doesn’t want her picture taken with a big red nose.) We did these shirts later in the evening and I didn’t bother to wash the screen out well enough. Big mistake. You always have to clean the screen promptly, I have had nothing but trouble since.

This has turned into a great new part of the sewing hobby. Even the Sewist has gotten behind making prints. She wants to screenprint herself a “SuperTrout” T-shirt to wear to a Blazers game as part of her penance for saying really mean things about Travis Outlaw early this year (this is a long story that would only be entertaining to Blazers fans, so I won’t torture you with that).

~Josh

After finishing my baseball caps I started working on another “idea hat” for Sarah.

This was much easier after going through the fit problems of the earlier models (it involved only sizing the main panel which wraps around the head). Taking inspiration (those are the pictures at the top of this post) from my winter head wear, my very nice wool Borsalino Fedora (thanks babe!), I interfaced this model with fusible fleece (which really is the gift that keeps on giving) and underlined it with lining fabric. The result is a really nice quilted look from the inside and some nice double needle top stitching (that isn’t as random as I had hoped for, unfortunately).

I am always struck by the number of stitches that make up a really great commercial hat, and have decided to embrace this idea of a not perfectly flat fabric but one with character from the threads. This is a good revelation for me. I used another piece of wool fabric, this being suiting, from Pendleton and cut it at different angles to make the plaid look random, which again doesn’t look as random as I desired, but I can live with that.

They Call Me “Crop-a-dile Dundee”

My other silly project this week has been adding eyelets to my sneakers using Sarah’s recently acquired Crop-a-Dile (which is not only a manly shade of pink, but also on sale at Costco right now with a ton of eyelets for $29). (The Crop-a-Dile is a gadget that looks like massive hole punch that easily inserts eyelets, snaps, brads, grommets, etc.)

I think it was worth the ten minutes to add some additional flair to some admittedly boring kicks. Why don’t sneakers come with eyelets anymore? We all know they make everything look sweeter. I have a feeling there will be a lot of shoe customization around these parts for the next couple of days.

~josh

As you may know, I love baseball and I especially love old school baseball uniforms and hats (oh yeah and jackets and sweaters and stir-ups, oh my). While I am happy for spring training to have started, I do feel a little distant from my favorite game. Another bad year for my Reds is definitely on the books, and goddamn, I am sick of steroids. With my newfound love of the Blazers, I don’t need baseball to signal the new year. After working diligently to make Sarah’s idea hats realties I decided to tackle making myself a baseball cap.

Using the basic set of skills acquired from the Idea Hat Recipe book and the remains of an old hat that I ripped apart for pattern pieces, I set out to make myself a hat in the style of the early 20th century baseball. My first attempt was a lovely red wool number that unfortunately looked more like a bicycle cap than a baseball cap, with its bill pointing straight down. There was a really great look to the cap, unfortunately, trying to fix the hat and make the bill more symmetrical, I totally cheesed it up and had to ditch it. This sucked for a number of reasons, it had a great look to it and had already been to its first Blazer game, you know one of those “the path to hell is paved with good intentions” kind of deal. (Note: Sarah is still pissed at me for wrecking this one—it looked really good.)

This first example is what I am now calling “The City” hat (the “P” on the front for, you guessed it, Portland). Instead of doing the mathematics (err, liberal arts major that I was) I decided to guess and added an inch of length to the pattern pieces left over from the dearly departed hat from the last paragraph. Since I was guessing the hat turned out to be an enormous size. To get it to fit I added an elastic band which gave “The City” a cool look with a “baggy” style cap with a really 19th century bill. It took me a couple of days, but I really have grown to love the damn thing.

Being that I really wanted to make an authentic cap I sat down at the kitchen table Saturday with the French curve, a piece of scrap paper and my thinking cap, in the guise of my previous hat. I took the circumference of my head, divided it by six (the number of panels) and added a seam allowance. I used the French curve to make the triangular shaped panels. After sewing the body of the hat together I tried it on and walked dorkily around the house with a nicely fitted unfinished hat. All baseball hats have vents, in the last hats I used the eyelet function on the sewing machine to make them in, with this hat we used Sarah’s lovely new “Crop-a-Dile” to add metal eyelets, which were sweet. I added the bill and used satin ribbon to make the band. After all the math, sizing and thinking, it was still too big, which meant a piece of elastic sewn into the back two panels to pull it tight. I wore this around Sunday and have decided to re-make the headband out of cotton, satin feels nice for a while but is too weak and just basically doesn’t work.

I probably should mention that the wool I used for these hats was from the scrap bin at the Pendleton outlet in Washougal (we rushed up there one Sunday afternoon to get there before they closed—how dorky is that?), which totaled $4 for two hats that are wearable and two that are now in the trash pile. To make the bill, instead of using cardboard or plastic like modern hats, I used a piece of buckram and fusible fleece which makes a bill that is shape-able and works really well for the short brimmed style. If I were to make a more modern (like say the 1940s) hat, I would use a harder material because it allows for the hat to pull tighter on your head. I will probably be making a lot of hats for the next couple of days, (indeed there is a half finished “Idea Hat” for Sarah sitting on the table).

Sarah and I went down to Civic Stadium (actual name PGE Park—Sarah calls it Civic Stadium because that’s what it was called when she was growing up here in Oregon) to take some pictures.

We missed the big college baseball games from the weekend, but take a look at the Oregon State Beavers’ new uniforms. A nice retro style, with the contrasting colored facing which the Sewist has informed me is going to be really cool this year (she actually follows these trends). I just want the socks!

I am trying to decide what to do with a beautiful piece of cream-colored wool flannel, either an old style baseball jersey or a hat like the Babe’s.

Any ideas?

~Josh

Burda, Burda, Burda. Such nice looking in the pattern books, and so damn difficult to actually finish. This sweatshirt is my first attempt at sewing in a little while. I have been so frustrated trying to finish (or to be more accurate “move forward”) on my Burda jacket I have been having a hard time getting motivated to start something new.

While at Bolt a couple of weeks back, I saw this lovely Italian (and I mean Italian in that italics way denoting some sort of exaggerated coolness, like Italian Sports Car) microfiber fleece a very nice charcoal color. Anyway, this fabric is incredibly soft and is double sided with a sueded looking front and a fuzzy back. I had bought this Burda 7981 “Sporty Ensemble” (yes, that’s the name Burda gave this particular pattern) sometime back at one of the $2.49 pattern sales and I love the quarter zipped shirt in most forms, including sweaters and sweatshirts.

As far as constructing this little beauty it came together rather well and with only one major surprise. Here’s the picture from Burda’s web site. Maybe you’ll figure out what’s weird about this pattern faster than I did.

The fit is really nice and euro snug (basically slim fit) and it has a structured look missing from a lot of men’s sportswear patterns out there.

The one problem we had was with the zipper, and I am going to let Sarah have a go at explaining what happened, because she had to bail me out on this point.

So if you take a close look at that picture, you can see that there’s something odd about the design. What Burda’s done is add an “interesting design element” to this sweatshirt pattern. That design element? Everything’s backward! Yes, the seams are on the OUTSIDE of the garment. So are the zippers. It would have been helpful if either Josh or I had noticed this “interesting design element” from the outset. We didn’t. So, as you can imagine the zipper instructions were quite perplexing for newbie sewer Josh. I parachuted into this project, never having done a quarter zip top before, and following Burda’s detailed instruction on this zip, thinking that I was somehow making a facing, so of like you do for an invisible zipper. I wasn’t. When all was said and done, the zipper was indeed on the outside of the shirt. I went on a minor rant about this, and referred to my trusty Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Sewing (which I should have done in the first place—Doh!) and figured out how to do it correctly. I performed some fairly significant surgery on the zipper and managed to reattach it the right way. It’s amazing it looks all presentable. After this nightmare scenario I was ready to blast Burda for having backward instructions for a zipper. I hate to blast them for creating an idiotic look, because they’re the only ones who do anything even marginally interesting in terms of men’s patterns. So, I’ll just say that I don’t get the inside-out look.~S

I was looking online for a pattern photo to use for this post and happened to take a closer look at the picture on Burda’s site. So it turns out that the whole entire pattern, as is quite evident from the picture we’ve included, is supposed to be inside out. This is not particularly apparent in the pattern instructions.

This color should make me blend right into the Oregon winter (or rainy season if you prefer). The sun can’t come quick enough!

Despite the stress of making this thing, now that I know what’s going on with this pattern, I can see myself making a bunch of these. I really like this type of sweater/sweatshirt things, and I could adjust the collar to being a bit less large for a sweater knit-type thing.

Thanks to my lovely wife for taking some bad-ass (in a good way) pictures of me in front of a bright orange Dumpster. It sort of brighten up the greyness of the last many days here.

~Josh

When we first started this little adventure Josh really wanted to make something sporty and retro. A pair of shorts seemed to be a great way to make something he would wear and also something that he could actually make (with lots and lots of assistance from the Sewist). Oh, yeah, and Josh also expressed a keen interest in appliqué.

Sarah, not knowing anything about sewing men’s clothing, guessed that a pair of shorts would be a good one to teach Josh on—not too much of a pain in the ass, and some room for creativity. Josh remembered trying to make a pair of shorts once when he was in high school that he totally gave up on had his Mom finish. (They were really really cool. He called them his “Tribe Called Quest Shorts” because they looked similar to an album cover. Imagine his surprise when the student teacher came in one day sporting the same fabric in shirt form, terribly imagined humiliation). Why not complete a project given up on years ago—how much could you screw up shorts? The answer is “not much” unless you sew the leg hole shut (another story for another time).

When the Sewer played soccer in high school, the fashion was to have BIG shorts, ridiculously large and puffy, they are still the look and feel that he is accustomed. For this project we combined the look of 1940s-50s cotton soccer shorts (after a lot of image searching on Google) with the leg numbering that became the fashion in the 1970s. We could have gone with a more traditional “throwback” jersey idea and made it look perfectly period appropriate, but we wanted to have some fun. Plus, Josh is not wearing shorts this short.

Our first task was to take a pair of shorts that the Sewer liked to wear and lay them out and measure them for length and leg width. Here is where we can make fun of Josh, because he didn’t want to use a pattern and didn’t believe in them at this point (novice indeed). (You can imagine how much this infuriated Sarah—he wanted to learn to sew, but was vehemently opposed to a sewing pattern?!) It wasn’t a big deal for this task, but would cause him headaches later in his sewing maturation. To make the crotch curve correctly, we used a pair of pajama pants from one of the Sewist’s patterns. This is where a French Curve or a pair of MEN’S pajama bottoms would work perfectly. We had to use the curve backwards to get the shorts to fit right. (This resulted in more of Sarah’s ire over Josh’s refusal to use a PATTERN.) Sarah also helped Josh make the shorts kind of A-lined, so that they’d be more flared and billowy.

We used a white cotton pique for the fabric, because it was stretchy, somewhat sporty and all cotton to give it that old school look. The Sewer felt particularly redeemed by his choice when the Sewist-in-law exclaimed how sporty and retro looking it was (no prompting either). For the construction of the shorts, it was a good choice because it was easy to work with for the sewing virgin, which wouldn’t have been true if we had used a more modern looking polyester.

I (Josh) would like to say that getting started scared the crap out of me. As you have heard me mention, I am cheap and I lived in fear of screwing up my $9 worth of fabric (ah, the good old days).

(Note from Sarah: Josh was also terrified of being impaled by the sewing machine. It was pretty hilarious and helped offset the irritation bred by Josh’s refusal to use a sewing pattern.)

To add some extra flair to the shorts, we added green piping down the outside of each leg and felt appliques. We used a simple elastic waistband and a double folded hem on the bottom of the legs, two things that would become important in other projects.

Believe it or not, sewing on the appliques was one of the most important lessons that the Sewer learned from this project. He really had to take his time a concentrate on the stitches in front of him and also he had to manipulate the fabric to do the curves of the letters and numbers, which is great start for when the sewing gets more complicated.

When the shorts were finished we had accomplished a project that Josh would actually wear (and feel awesome in), which is also a great way to start off a sewing career.

Here is a rundown of the supplies we used:

1 yard of cotton pique $9.00
1 elastic waistband $1.00
piping $3.00
thread $4.00
felt $0.80

total cost: $17.90 with thread and piping left over for other projects. “Authentic” soccer shorts cost $40 dollars or more. The total cost for this project is less than $18 and a lot of fun!

Josh would also like to take this opportunity to show off. No, not his pasty legs, but the snazzy new shoes he’s sporting in this shot. Yeah, they’ve got neon signs on them.