Seat of the Pants

I'm not all that fussy about appearances, and my house is furnished in "Early American Hand-Me-Down, Kids-and-Hobbies". However, I had to do something about the dining room chairs when their covers started ripping from long wear. The table-and-chairs set was left to us by an old housemate when he moved out, and he had bought them at a garage sale before that. They are perfect for our casual lifestyle of feet on the furniture, food spilling, painting, leather working and sewing at the kitchen table. So they were already ugly, but the rips made them uncomfortable too.



In keeping with my waste-not-want-not leanings, and because my friends are still giving me their worn-out jeans (Yay! Keep it up!), the perfect material was obvious: recycled denim! I had also recently bought a book at a silent auction, "The New Sampler Quilt" by Diana Leone, and making sampler blocks for the chair covers seemed like a project I might be able to finish in a reasonable time (where "reasonable" is defined as "less time than the still-unfinished Jeans Circle Quilt from Hell").

The Jeans

For my six chairs, I used the legs of 10 pairs of adult jeans. Four pairs of varying colors (black, dark blue, medium blue, light blue) went to form the quilt blocks. Then I used one pair of legs for the surrounding sections on each chair.

The jeans pocket sections went to the middle school for a group making bags for a school project.

Finding the Grain

Quilt tops work better if the pieces are cut on the grain of the fabric. The grain of reused jeans isn't always obvious because of the diagonal pattern of the denim weave, so I found the grain by pulling off thread after thread (fraying the denim) until I had a straight edge I could work from. Fortunately I had plenty of excess on the jeans legs.


The Squares

Each chair has a different classic quilt square design. I did Wheel, Spools, Ohio Star, Monkey Wrench, King's X, and Card Trick (the hands-down favorite of the household--it's the one behind the dog).


I made templates from the patterns in the sampler book, traced with kids' washable markers and cut them out, and machine pieced them following the instructions in the book.

Once the squares were pieced, I sewed on the fabric from a pair of legs around the square to make the background. I washed the covers after that to get rid of the washable marker.


Quilting

I used batting left over from a previous project. For the quilt backing, I reused six small flannel receiving blankets (complete with Pooh or teddy bear pictures!) that I had left from when my two kids were newborn babies. This would never be visible, but it wouldn't hurt to have something sturdy but soft wrapped around the padding and the wooden seat bases.


I machine quilted the three layers "in the ditch" along the seam lines between the square design pieces so the sewing wouldn't be very visible.




House of Foam

Padding matters. I got a couple of different "chair-sized" pieces of padding at the local fabric/crafts store. These were two inches thick. One was Airtex High Density Foam. The other was Poly-Fil NU-Foam, which is a compressed polyester fiber pad. Unfortunately they were too small for my chairs, but my family sat on them for a week or so to try them out. I found they were too thick to fit well under the backs of the chairs, but they weren't firm enough. When we sat on them, we'd go right down to the wood surface beneath.

I went to a place called House of Foam in Palo Alto, CA. The proprietor suggested 1" thick high resilience (HR) foam, which he said is the usual one he sells for dining room chairs. It cost about $12 per chair (just slightly more than the same amount of the other padding types would have cost), but as his website says, "Generally the firmer the foam, the longer its firmness will last, and the more expensive it is." However, what I got from House of Foam was definitely the right stuff. They even cut it to shape and glued it onto the the chair seats for me while I ate lunch across the street, making it well worth it for me to go to such a specialty shop.


Putting It Together

I cut off the excess from the quilted covers, then I sprayed the covers with a coat of Scotchgard in the (probably vain) hope that the covers would stay cleaner longer. I used a staple gun to attach the cover over the foam and around to the bottom of the wooden seat pieces. Each seat was then attached to the chair legs and back with four screws, so that part was easy.


Here is the finished set of chairs.


New Beginning and the End

Interestingly, when I removed the previous covers from the wood, I found that these chairs had been recovered at least twice before (old staples and tacks, shreds of two other fabrics). It feels kind of nice to be carrying on a tradition of reuse, and not just throwing something away because it was old. I did, however, grit my teeth and throw out the old cotton padding and fabric covers. They had done their share of service.

Gratuitous Dog Pictures

I managed to sneak in one or two blog entries without dog pictures, but this entry required a lot of pictures, and Lacey now comes running if she even hears the camera turn on.

She's a big help!


She looks like this chair is made for her.


After all, since I have to let my kids sit on these chairs, why not the dog? The kids are often messier!

Shoe Mania, Part 4: They're Multiplying!

I was so pleased and excited by the results of my first pair of sandals that I immediately started on three more pairs. I had another design that I wanted to make for myself, and of course both of my daughters wanted some too.

Younger Daughter's Pair: Fancy Thong Sandals with Horse Head Conchos

My younger daughter flipped through the "Sandal Making" book and selected a thong style. Of course she wanted a small modification to the style to make it just what she wanted. She wanted a horse head decoration in the middle of the shoe. Tandy had some matched right- and left-facing horse head conchos that were just the thing.

I cut out the bottom soles and heels for her shoes. Her shoe size is about a kids' size 2, and it took about a square foot of saddle skirting leather.




It's easy to make a long oblong slot for a wide strap even if you don't have a big enough punch. Simply punch a second (or third) time, overlapping the ends of the hole, as in the following picture.


The colors and dyeing process were pretty similar to what I did with my first pair. With her pair, however, she wanted the sole to be black. No problem. After dyeing, I cleaned the pieces with Lexol and treated them with carnauba creme (wax). Since I was going to be gluing the straps to the soles, I didn't treat the whole pieces with the wax. I used the tape to show where I didn't need wax.


Fitting her shoes took repeated efforts, since I had to align the toe straps with the conchos and the riveting and make it fit around her foot properly. I did a fair amount of skiving on both the soles and the strap ends for her shoes so she wouldn't have huge lumps where the double layer of straps went under her (lack of) arch (I marked the skived areas with chalk in the picture below). I didn't bother with padding.


For my first pair I had used nails to reinforce the connections between the straps and the soles after I had glued them with Tandy's contact cement. For this new pair, I used rivets and cement. I also skived the straps, shaving off some of the blue and green dyed layers, so they wouldn't have such noticeable edges under the foot.


Next, I glued on the sole, avoiding putting cement on the back strap, which is supposed to slide.


For this pair of sandals, I wanted to try stitching around the edges of the sandals instead of nailing on the sole. The stitching gives a neater, more finished look to the sandals. The first step is to mark a dotted line of dents using an overstitcher that gives 5 stitches per inch.


I then used a Number 51 drill bit (just smaller than 1/16th of an inch) to drill holes through the soles. I was using a hand-held corded drill. It took 40 minutes for me to drill all around the two child-sized sandals, and my hands and arms were aching by the time I finished. Unfortunately, it was hard to drill straight down through the soles, so the bottom line of holes (and the resulting stitch line) wavered quite a bit. I drilled right through the heels as well.


We used two-needle stitching (my daughters both did some). I found helpful information on this on the web, particularly on the Back Room Leather website. I used waxed nylon sewing awl thread from Tandy. The stitching took about three hours.


We tried various methods to smooth the edges of the sole. Here my younger daughter is using sandpaper wrapped around a small block of wood to sand the edges of her sandals. She is using a "lacing pony" to hold the sandal while she works. The sandpaper-around-wood worked, but it was very slow, and it didn't work on parts that curved inward (the arch area). I also used coarse sandpaper cylinders attached to a mandrel on my drill. That worked better.


Once the stitching and trimming steps were done, I dyed the edges black to match the inner sole.

I don't want the shoes to be slippery, and I want to protect the stitching from wear, so I put a layer of SoleTech 3.5 on both the heels and the main part of the soles.

I had learned my lesson from the first pair of sandals, so I cut the SoleTech pieces a bit large and then trimmed them off after gluing the pieces to the sandals.


Here are the finished sandals:


Here is the front view:


I think the horse head conchos were an inspired piece of design on my daughter's part. She gets comments all the time about how cool they are. I hope she doesn't outgrow them in a month, but if she does, I can always make her another pair!

Polyester and Cotton

I recently got a question on my review of the Tulip tie-dye kit as to why everyone recommends 100% cotton items for tie-dyeing.

The reason for the 100% rule (down to 80% cotton usually works fine too) is that polyester fibers are, when you get right down to it, plastic. Think about the polyester fleece now made from recycled soda bottles (such as that in Patagonia products), and you have the idea. The Procion dyes used in the Tulip kits (as well as Dharma and Jaquard) wash right off of plastic (gloves, table covers, etc.). So that's what happens with your shirts. If you look closely at the cotton/poly, you should be able to see white fibers after washing the excess dye out. That's the polyester.

Here are some examples. The following picture shows a rag I use to clean up my dye spills (thus the mottled colors). It's a piece of thermal underwear that is a cotton/poly blend.


Here is a closeup of the same piece. The white threads are the polyester. The cotton has taken the dye.


It's almost impossible to find pure cotton socks, since synthetics such as polyester and nylon help the socks wear much better. Also, any elastic used in the socks will be non-cotton itself and probably covered in polyester or nylon. The trick is to find socks that hide the polyester or other synthetics as well as possible. Usually you will have to try dyeing a pair to see how they work, since it's impossible to tell the difference when the socks are still white.

This sock shows a lot of synthetic content in the foot, but less in the folded-down cuff. If you like the heathery mismatched look, it's fine.


This sock dyes quite well. The foot is only a little heathery, and the outside of the slouch cuff hardly shows white at all.


Here is the closeup. Note that the elastic around the cuff is fairly well hidden on the inside. You can see the white flecks in the foot area.


Here are two turtlenecks I dyed. The one on the left is 100% cotton, and the one on the right is 60%cotton/40%polyester. The turquoise and navy shades are supposed to be the same in both shirts.


You can't quite see the white threads here because they are so fine and well interspersed with the cotton, but it's definitely the polyester making this shirt so faded looking.


This is where the turtleneck attaches to the poly-blend shirt. The turtleneck is a somewhat different blend from the shirt body, and it contains 10% spandex. It is also a different weight and knit from the body. Note that the two different blues are the different fabrics' reaction to the same dye color. There is no way I could have intentionally dyed these different shades with such a clean line between them!


The following is the 100% cotton shirt. Note that in both this and the previous shirts, the stitching is pure white. It's polyester. For most shirts, nobody would notice, or if they did, they would think that it's intentional contrast stitching. However, this is why Dharma notes on almost all of their garment blanks whether they are stitched with polyester thread (they often say "Not cotton thread"). For some garments, visible white stitching would be an unwelcome surprise.


Dyeing Polyester

Dyeing polyester requires different types of colorants, since most fabric dyes just wash off the fiber. Dharma offers one type of dye for polyester but it requires hot water, and it usually needs to be simmered on the stove. Since I'm more of a natural fiber fan, and I'm too lazy to use anything other than the cold-water Procion dyes, I haven't tried it myself.

Respect the Blends

Keep in mind that you can get interesting effects using the cotton/poly blend fabrics, such as the patterned effect on the thermal underwear knit. I've seen tops in stores recently where the fabric is knit in stripes or patterns of cotton followed by polyester blend, providing a very cool arrangement of strong and pale colors. Also, if you like pale pastels, blended fabrics give you an easy way to do it.

Making Plans to Make Tracks

Faire warning: The Maker Faire is coming back to San Mateo, California, May 30 and 31 (the weekend after Memorial Day weekend).

I have written about the Maker Faire before. I practically start hopping up and down when I think about going to it. In fact, I was lying in bed thinking about it and decided I had to start writing about it again before I'd be able to get any sleep, so I got back out of bed.

The Maker Faire has a huge variety of displays, exhibits, demonstrations, activities, and shopping opportunities that appeal to a wide variety of tastes and interests. You'll see the quaint, the bizarre, the practical, the artistic, the robotic, the gothic, the stylish, the geeky, the eco-minded, the homey, the flaming (literally), the tiny, the giant, and the flat-out "huh?", all in one place.

Tips

Last year the faire was bursting at the seams of the San Mateo Expo Center. In the afternoon, the ticket and backpack search lines were really long. Get your tickets in advance from the website, and arrive early in the day.

Carpool! There is parking, but the extra parking is quite a hike away from the entrance.

Wear comfortable shoes. You will be doing a LOT of walking.

Take a water bottle. You'll need it.

Take empty shopping bags. There is a lot of very tempting stuff there.

Food is not the strong point of the Maker Faire. Eat well before you go.

Take a camera! The sights are amazing, and your friends back home won't believe you without pictures.

Study the Maker Faire schedule and map on the website. They have lots of special events, and different parts of the faire close at different times (as I found out the hard way last year).

Keep an open mind. You'll never know how much fun it is to ride a wooden bicycle until you try it!


See you there!

Visiting Michael at Island Sandals

When I was getting started on my sandalmaking project, I spent some time with Google searching on the Internet for shoemakers, shoemaking supplies, sandalmaking, and other similar queries (a close friend taught me a few years ago how useful Google can be, and now I'm addicted to it). I found lots of interesting results, such as a high fashion designer shoemaking school, YouTube videos on old-fashioned shoemaking, shoe repair suppliers, and so on.

Serendipitous Coincidence

One of the websites I found was for Island Sandals, located in Lahaina, Maui. It so happened that I was already planning a family Winter Break trip to Hawaii (the Big Island and Maui) to see the volcanoes there (inspired by a recent unit in my older daughter's middle school science class). I started an email correspondence with Michael the Sandalmaker, and made plans to visit him in his shop in Lahaina while I was on Maui.

Among other things, I carted all four pairs of sandals I had made so far to Lahaina with me (that was easy--the kids were wearing theirs!) to get Michael's opinions and advice on them.

I didn't take many pictures or any video while I was visiting Michael, since some previous visitors had already done an extensive set of videos of Michael discussing his sandals, their care and cleaning, and some of the reasons he makes them the way he does.

The Sandal Design

Michael bases his sandal design on an ancient Ethiopian design meant for running warriors. The classic design is elegant in its simplicity. It has two straps: one runs under the heel and comes up on both sides of the heel as the riser, and the other is a long thin strap that winds around the foot and through holes in the sole to form the main part of the sandal. This "harness" strap arrangement holds the sandal on the foot really well so that the relatively-thin sandal sole moves with the foot (as opposed to the motion of the sole of a flip-flop sandal). When I tried some on, I felt like I should be doing dance moves in them.


The blue in the picture is the foam Michael uses for padding. The old sandal on the right is one Michael shows customers of an example of a sandal that has been well cared for with Saddle Soap and has been worn pretty much constantly for 15 years or so.

The main strap is fastened with an ancient and very simple knot that gets tighter over time.

Here is the back of the knot:

Here is a slip-knot version of the knot, used for things that need to be released easily:


The only metal in the shoe is a trio of brass nails that reinforce the attachment of the rubber heel.

The Pattern

Michael showed me how he traces the feet, keeping the ballpoint pen straight up and down for an accurate pattern. Since most people's feet are not the same, he traces both feet. Here is Michael's example of a foot tracing.

The holes for the straps are located such that the straps never go directly underneath where the bones of the feet press on the sole. For example, in the picture above of Michael's old sandal, the heel riser strap goes across underneath the foot just in front of where the heel comes down on the sole, not directly underneath the heel. Also, the straps never press on the bones above the soles (you wouldn't want a strap pressing on a bunion), but rather they nestle into the hollows between them.

All the Cool Toys

One advantage Michael has (besides working in beautiful Lahaina) is that he has all the right tools. Over the years he has bought a shopful of shoemaking and shoe repair tools from various places, typically from shoe makers and repairers who were retiring. The technology for making custom shoes hasn't changed very much over the past 50 or more years, even though the technology for mass producing shoes (like athletic shoes, for example) has changed quite a bit.

One of Michael's main tools is known as a finisher, which is basically a long spinning pole with several different wheels spaced along it for grinding, sanding, and polishing, such as for grinding and sanding the edges of a new sole of a shoe (here is what a new one looks like--Michael's is a much older finisher, though probably not quite as old as this one from 1948). It's a standard machine for a shoe repair business. It's also quite dangerous (especially the older ones), since it's easy for straps and such to get caught in it. Michael told me he'd once gotten a finger caught, and the finisher had dislocated all of the finger joints. Ouch!

Michael also has a stitching machine that pokes a hole with an awl-like point and then pokes back through the hole with the thread-bearing needle. Also a dangerous machine (not for use by kids).

I'm not planning to get any of the shoemaking machinery Michael has--it simply won't fit in my garage (and we now have a rule that I can only bring in new stuff if I get rid of the equivalent amount of stuff!). I probably won't be starting a business or making enough shoes to justify big equipment anyhow. But it's great to see how the pros do it!

The Leather

Michael uses latigo leather exclusively. This is leather that has been dyed and heavily oiled at the tannery. It's perfect for sandals. Michael gets his leather from all over the world.

(Not) Sniffing Glue

One great piece of advice Michael gave me was to move away from using contact cement that contained MEK (methyl ethyl ketone), toluene, and other toxic chemicals. He suggested a different adhesive, 3M's FastBond 30, which is water based. It turns out to be fairly hard to find, but I was able to order a gallon of it online through thegluedepot.com.

I'm now using the Fastbond 30 for all of my shoemaking work. I really like it. It seems to hold just as well as the regular contact cement from Tandy, but it doesn't smell nearly as bad, and it doesn't need to carry a "could be fatal" warning on the label (a big plus, since I planned to use it with a bunch of middle school girls). I also find it easier to work with, since it's more like paint, and it doesn't get as stringy as regular contact cement. The downside is that you do have to wait a bit longer for the Fastbond 30 to dry before you can put the pieces together. A fan helps with the drying, though (and dissipates what smell there is).

A Fun Visit

Michael clearly enjoys his work and talking to his visitors, though a lot of his custom sandals are ordered by mail (especially for repeat customers). His sandals are really beautiful.

I had a great time visiting Michael in Lahaina, and I learned a lot. Thanks, Michael!

Shoe Mania, Part 3: Sandal Pieces, Unite!

Now that I had dyed and put together the uppers for my sandals, I wanted to add some padding between the soles before I put the soles together. I got some foam rubber meant for insoles that had a tan knit fabric covering on one side (Ortho Sponge Top-Cover ordered from Louis Birns & Sons). I'll get it without the fabric for next time, but this will be fine for now.

I cut out 3/4-length pieces for each foot, plus extra pieces for a second layer at the heel.


First, I glued the heel layer to the sole layer of padding. I also marked where the sandal straps will go relative to the padding.


Since the straps are all supposed to be adjustable, they need to be able to slide across the sole, so I was careful to avoid putting any contact cement where the straps will be. I'm now ready to glue the padding to the upper sole. Note that the extra layer of padding at the heel will butt right up against the strap there.



The fabric side of the foam rubber did not glue well, so it required multiple coats of the contact cement before gluing to the other piece.

Also, once I had it glued together, there wasn't enough leather to form a good bond around the padding. I pulled it back apart, trimmed the padding to be narrower, and glued it back together.


Nailing the Soles

Since I had this romantic vision of shoemakers nailing shoes together, I wanted to try that myself. Finding the right type of nails turned out to be problematic, though, since normal people don't use shoemaker's nails. There are also quite a few different types of shoemaker's nails. The instructions I was following in the "Sandal Making" book just said "Sole Nails", which turns out to be not quite the right terminology.

I ended up getting "wire clinch nails" from Louis Birns. And of course, I needed to learn yet another measurement convention. It seems that for wire clinch nails, the sizes are noted as 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, and 8/8, where 8/8 is a nail an inch long, and 4/8 is half an inch. The trick, though, is that the tip of the nail is meant to bend over when it strikes the anvil, thus locking the nail into the leather sole. So an 8/8 nail is meant to secure a sole that is just less than an inch thick.

I used 5/8 for the main sole and 7/8 for the heel. Here you can see that the nails on the sole poke through quite a bit and bend way over--they are too long for this thickness of sole. These nails would really mess up a nice hardwood floor.

If you look closely you can see the U shape of the nails poking out from the soles--not the desired effect.

Non-slip Soling

I got a sheet of SoleTech 3.5 soling material from Louis Birns. This is pretty thin rubbery material with a slight texture to make the soles less slippery.

Here are the SoleTech pieces I cut. I don't plan to have the rubber come up over the point of the shoes, so it is cut short at the toes.


I glued on the SoleTech with more contact cement. I also dyed the edges of the sandals blue and treated them with Lexol and carnauba creme as I did with the upper soles and straps.

Here are the finished sandals. Yay! I've finished my first pair!


Thoughts for Next Time

Nails: The 7/8 wire clinch nails I used around the heels worked fine, but the 5/8 nails I used for the much thinner sole section were too long. This caused them to form raised "U" shapes on the surface of the sole when they bent over, instead of having just the tip bending flat back into the sole.

Bottom sole surfacing: I had some trouble with having the SoleTech sheet peeling off the sandals, particularly where the nails stuck up from the leather sole, causing about a square centimeter of the SoleTech to not adhere well to the leather sole with the contact cement. I had to redo the sole piece for one sandal, partly because I had cut it a little small, and a couple of nails stuck out right at the edge, aggravating the peeling problem. The second time I cut the SoleTech piece a little larger than the sole, and I trimmed off the excess with a knife after gluing. That worked much better. I think trimming the rubber to the sole also helps avoid creating a place where the rubber can catch on something and be pulled off. Later, though, I plan to try some different soling materials. This SoleTech 3.5 is really too thin and fragile for the sandals I'm making, and it's wearing through much too quickly.

Cement: It also seemed that the contact cement wasn't strong enough (except for its smell!) for gluing the rubber to the leather, though it was fine for the leather-to-leather bond. One of the guys at the leather store suggested using multiple coats of the cement on each side before putting them together. I tried multiple coats later, and it helped (though at that later point I was also using the new Barge formula of Tandy's contact cement, which may have worked better, though it smelled even worse than the previous cement).

The Lure of Leather

This is the piece of thick "saddle skirting" leather I used for my soles. It was an entire side before I started cutting it, and it takes up most of my kitchen floor.


Once in a while I get way too much help! Both my younger daughter and Lacey think this is just the place to plop down for a bit...


And, of course, they want some sandals too!