THE FOREWORD
I hope everyone's taking care of themselves with the COVID-19 panic that's going around. Hopefully everyone here is doing their best to remain healthy and sane - I know I am. Y'all are in my thoughts.
THE AGENDA
Post updates to your projects, announce the beginning of new projects, or just show off what you've done.
THE TAGS
Foveaux, kleinbl00, zebra2, applewood, darlinareyousleepy, elizabeth, Dala, thenewgreen, ilex
Did some pandemic themed embroidery on my sweater - probably my best work yet! The one thing I found missing is a white pencil to draw the outline in a more visible way. I’ll add it to the shopping list! Also made some doodles: Right side is sketched based on an old photo. I feel like these type of drawing could look good with watercolor.
Rain garden! It started with a 50' trench through the chicken run. This was made more difficult by Joy and Coco, who weren't patient enough for me to shovel the dirt out before checking it for worms. I wish I had a final trench pic. It was brutal. I did a pretty good job eyeballing the slope though. I didn't need to fuss with it too much after running a level along it. My daughter and I spread seeds that we collected from swap grasses, milkweeds, and such last fall. We also spread wild flower seeds along the fence. I'll have to post some pictures as it comes to life. We are due for a couple of days of rain, so I can see it in action starting this evening. What can't be seen here is that the garden is at the base of a hill, so in addition to the rain gutter, it should collect water from the other direction as well.
kingmudsy must be partially psychic. Once again, he didn’t post this thread until after I’ve taken care of some essential chores, which is good, cause I’ve been looking forward to this thread basically since the last one. If anyone has been half paying attention, I’ve become a little frayed between job problems, the economy reversing, and Covid 19. I apologize deeply for my inability to stay composed. The other day I told kleinbl00 that I found a junky jacket while doing spring cleaning. Here it is. After taking a closer look at it, it’s not as bad as I first remembered, but I think my view of it is tainted by my disdain for it. I remember how I got this jacket, my bud called me up one day and said he found one of my jackets in his house while cleaning and that I should come get it. I told him I wasn’t missing any jackets, but if no one claims it, I wouldn't turn down something for free. He was incredulous that it wasn't mine, it’s my size (true), my color (eh, kind of, I like the tone but not in grey), and it was a workwear jacket which he knows I wear. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL on the last part. This is no workwear jacket. It’s a fast fashion, cheaply made yet overpriced, no good mall jacket. I’d barely even call it workwear styled. But look, this thing? This thing is gross. It’s lined, yet somehow on a windy day, the wind still cuts through it. It sits awkward on me. Worse yet, kind of like me, the mere state of existing is enough to cause this thing to fall apart. Edit: goobster, you're a fashion guy. What would you call the style of this poor, little thing? I mean, look at this thing. All over, threads are coming undone, hems are scuffed, it’s just a mess. I barely ever even wear this thing. In fact, it’s been so long since I’ve worn it, I forgot I even owned it. And the color. Ugh! It’s hideous and that’s saying something because if you ask Dala, she says I like nothing but earth tones and muted colors and heaven forbid I wear anything even slightly cheerful. But you know, right now, the world is falling apart a bit, isn’t it? It’s trying to take us along with it, isn’t it? It feels like we don’t have a lot of control over the situation, let alone any real power to fix anything, doesn’t it? So I guess, as a method of self therapy, I guess I’ll fix things I can fix, and maybe this jacket will be one of those things. Who knows? Maybe by the end, I won’t hate this thing. Man. I feel sorry for whoever payed money for these jackets. They got ripped off. Look at this cuff. Look at it! It doesn’t have any density. It doesn’t have any shape. It’s falling apart. Even in the background, there’s loose threads. There’s loose threads all over this jacket. So what am I gonna do? I’m gonna start with this cuff and go from there. I’m not gonna do anything fancy, like reconstruct it or anything. PSA: Careful searching “Cuff Repair” or “Cuff Reconstruction” into like, Youtube and such, unless you wanna see a bunch of stuff about surgery. Please, please, please use words like “shirt cuff repair” to filter results down to stuff you actually wanna see. Unless, you’re curious about surgery, then ignore my advice and knock yourself out. No, I’m not gonna reconstruct it. I’m just gonna do a buttonhole stitch all along the seam to reinforce everything. What’s a buttonhole stitch you ask? Well, the way I’ve been taught, it’s the same as a blanket stitch, only the stitches are smaller and closer together to reinforce edges and keep them from fraying under friction. To do that, I’m gonna have to use this polyester thread I have laying around (which coincidentally, matches the jacket quite nice). Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re all like “applewood, I thought you don’t like using synthetics. You’re all like ‘plastic is evil, natural is good’” and yeah, usually you’re right, but for something like this polyester thread is almost necessary for two reasons. One, unlike cotton or linen thread, this stuff will hold up to abrasion much, much, much better, giving my work longevity. Heck, I expect my stitches to last longer than the fabric of the jacket, to be honest with you. Second, all of my cotton thread is thin. This stuff is about three times thicker, which means I’m able to fill in the same amount of area using less stitches than if I used cotton thread. Besides, I have the thread laying around, it’s gonna need to be used eventually, might as well use it on this jacket. About an hour later, here’s how it turned out. Not bad, not great, but not bad. I don’t think this jacket can be saved, to be honest, but I guess I’ll give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe by the time I’m done with things, I’ll like how it turned out and actually want to wear it. We’ll see. . . . Don’t read the news today people. Shit’s on fire, yo.
I've had a couple of coats like this, and have always called them a "photographer's coat" or jacket. This one, however, is a "fast fashion" style item, made to last a single season and probably 5 washings, before being tossed aside. Your decision to put time into repairing it is admirable... but eventually you will lose. The fabric fraying at the edges? Yeah... that's happening microscopically at the seams, too, and they will eventually burst, talking the seam allowance with them, and making repairs impossible. Have fun with it, but know that this coat is not long for this world. :-)
Yeah, I'm working on it knowing I can toss it without regret if I mess it up. I'm adding patches now, on the flat parts, to get a feel for things while I figure out what to do with the seams, especially where the sleeves meet the chest/shoulders/back. I talked to my mother about this jacket and we figured whether I try to alter this or make something from scratch, I'm gonna learn stuff and experience headaches either way. So I'll tackle this first, see how jackets work, and go from there. :)
After this jacket, find a shit/jacket/whatever you like. Get it at a thrift shop for less than $10. Then carefully take all the seams out, and lay out the separate pieces. That, more than anything, will help you understand clothing construction, and how things morph/change over time due to wear. You will see pieces that no longer lay flat, due to shaping around the body part (like shoulders and elbows), and understand where seams are under the most stress, and where the most wear and tear really is. It's a pretty cool experiment, if you are looking to grow your knowledge of how clothes are constructed.
Right? I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I'm a bit of two minds. On the one hand, I can go the traditional band/slogan/blue collar patch route, which might fit the jacket pretty well, but not fit my personality. The other thing I was thinking, the wind cuts through this. I could attempt to open up the lining, insert cotton batting, and sew it back up. If I go that route though, I'll probably need to literally quilt the jacket to hold the batting in place. If I go that route, I could add patterned fabric to it and make a pseudo patchwork jacket. The problem with that is, especially with the pockets, that doesn't fit the cut/personality of the jacket. That said, I know there are options out there and this is the first time I'm trying to look at this thing without hating it and hoping to save it, so I should take my time and plan something out. You got any inspiration?
Would it be accurate to describe it as a cargo jacket? I'd be tempted to go cosplay on it
It's faux military surplus is why. The real stuff is generally better built and more meticulously crafted; Hugo Boss designed the uniforms for the Waffen SS. That jacket you have is kind of a derivative of a derivative of the Bundeswehr jacket and M65 jacket of the Cold War. The actual army surplus stuff is subject to weapons-grade otaku fetishism at this point; a Buzz Ricksons jacket is damn near a character in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.
Interesting. I can see now why my friend would have mistaken it for workwear, not cause of the material, but the style. Honestly, I never would have guessed this was a military style. Usually, when I think military jacket, I think of something either along the lines of a marine's dress blues or like the jackets they wore in the Korean war. I uh, hope you don't take this the wrong way. Now I wanna alter it. Maybe take off the pockets and take it in at the waist a bit. The military look, isn't for me, philosophically speaking.
I'm going to be distancing myself as per the recommendations pretty soon here, and I'm hoping to pick up some new hobbies while I do it. I ordered a beginner's embroidery set off of Amazon, thinking it'll be a fun way to decorate some of the old stuff I have laying around. Not sure I have an actual project in mind at the moment, but it's never a bad time to pick up new skills! I'll update with whatever I produce (it's sure to be garbage, but it'll be my garbage!)
Feeling better. Swapped out the HID ballast on the other headlight of the Porsche. Got sick of waiting on my cousin so I rebuilt the clock. Li'l secret about clocks? They're all pieces of shit. Their fit and finish is garbage. They're all steel-on-brass with no attempts to limit wear or runout. Pretty much every clock you've ever seen in the US is a Howard Miller, or maybe a Sligh, or maybe a Herschede and it doesn't fucking matter because every single one of them has pretty much the exact same Hermle movements going back to the '60s. Which is whatever because really what determines the time is the length of the pendulum. That's it. Full stop. What determines how well it tells time? Well there's a bunch of stuff. You can make the pendulum out of Invar, whose coefficient of expansion is technically described as "fuckall." You can add a barometric compensator to minutely adjust the moment of inertia to account for air resistance. You can separate the going from the timing. But I mean, I'm adjusting the beat error on this thing by tapping at the fork gently with a screwdriver (I got it down to 0.01% and then I turned the chimes on and off again and it went to 0.1%). And I can get the timing from -1s/day to -5s a day just by gently tugging on the pendulum - no adjustments, just seating the damn thing a little more. I'm halfway convinced it crawls back up over time. Changed out the chimes. Four screws. No longer sounds like a dropped piano. Will not bore you with youtube videos of clock chimes. More numbers fell off the face of it. Cheap, crappy build. Ten thousand dollar clock and the dial ornamentation is badly-plated nickel alloy. Closer and closer to doing dumb things.
