Here's the front, with an inverted pleat.

And the back, with a full-button opening.

Sheena Matheiken began an experiment in fashion sustainability in May, 2009.  What if she were to wear only one dress for an entire year?  365 days?

How do you design a dress that can be worn all year around? We took inspiration from one of my staple dresses, improving upon the shape and fit to add on some seasonal versatility. The dress is designed so it can be worn both ways, front and back, and also as an open tunic. It’s made from a durable, breathable cotton, good for New York summers and good for layering in cooler seasons. With deep hidden pockets to appease my deep aversion for carrying purses.

Actually, there were seven dresses, all identical, because, I suppose, doing laundry every night isn’t anybody’s idea of sustainability.

The dress part of the project was intriguing enough, but Sheena and her crew went one step further.  They called the exercise The Uniform Project, and turned it into a fundraiser for a group that educated children in India.  Here’s how Sheena described the other part of her mission:

The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India. At the end of the year, all contributions will go toward Akanksha’s School Project to fund uniforms and other educational expenses for children living in Indian slums.

Here she is on July 10, wearing her LBD as an over-dress.  The red trim is under the dress, and then picked up again by the belt:

Halfway through, celebrating the sixth month anniversary of the Project.  The front pleat gave her enough room to add a petticoat beneath.  Add a collar, a satin cummerbund and those great gloves — and wow:

On January 5, with a t-shirt under and a sweatshirt pastiche-of-a-corset providing a burst of color:

On March 24, with just a big belt, a cowl and exuberant tights:

On January 21st, an over-T and a wrap belt:

There’s more, much more at The Uniform Project.  Click through the calendar at the left to see each day’s image.  Sheena is adorable and gamine, but there’s plenty of inspiration for those of us who are neither.

Sheena’s styles get quite wild and crazy; I’ve deliberately chosen the most conservative in deference to those of us who like character, but who aren’t gamine types (or very young women) ourselves.  But every day of Sheena’s project is worth viewing — it’s a real treat.  And, though the Project is over,  it’s not too late to donate to Arkanksha, either, if you like.

For fashionistas, there are notes for each image describing the accessories, etc., all of which were thrifted or donated to the Project.  As of today (May 19, 2010) the Uniform Project has raised $94,742.00, enough, they say, to keep 263 kids in school through the Arkanksha Foundation.  The fashion may veer toward the wacky, but there’s no more down-to-earth goal than educating tomorrow’s adults.  Good work, on all fronts, Sheena and crew!

The “fingers” are really your toes, of course. There’s one protected pod for each of your little piglets. Wearing these is like going barefoot, but without the incidental pain or discomfort of stepping on random twigs or small pebbles when you’re outdoors. They provide enough protection that you can stride around without fear, but you also feel the ground in a way that is almost wonderful.

Putting them on the first time is a bit of a strange experience and getting used to putting each toe into its own little pocket seems weird at first, but quickly becomes second nature. I always wear shoes with roomy, boxy, toes, but the feeling of freedom this footwear provides surpasses anything else that goes on my feet.

I do spend much of the year going barefoot in my home, walking on hardwood floors. People who don’t go barefoot regularly might find that there’s some ramp-up time before they’re used to Five Fingers. The manufacturer even recommends wearing them only a couple of hours at a time until they’re familiar. I padded around the house for a few hours a day a couple of times, but on me they felt right instantly.

They’re perfection in the kayak. I have to wear a life vest, but otherwise, I prefer as few layers as possible between me and my boat. It’s smart to wear shoes, though — there’s nasty stuff on those there lake bottoms and river banks, and sometimes we like to hike in a bit and picnic while on a longer paddling trip. These feel like a second skin, but protect like a shoe.

Five Fingers sells the model above specifically for water sports, but I didn’t like the fit of the top of the shoe, or the way the strap lay on my foot. The worry is that you might lose an unstrapped shoe if you go overboard. So I did a simple mod — I just wrap elastic straps around each shoe while I’m in the kayak. I suspect this would be enough to keep them on my feet, and it’s easy enough to pop the strap off once I’m on land.

Making the straps took all of five minutes. I used black one-inch wide non-roll elastic, folded one end over a rectangular loop, folded under the raw edge at the other end, zig-zagged everything in place, and added hook and loop closures. I put the rectangular loop next to the side of my shoe (where I won’t feel it), and tuck the part that hook-and-loops closed under my instep. Eventually, I might wear out the elastic under the sole, but making new straps obviously won’t be much of a strain.

Five Fingers are machine washable (some reviewers — mostly runners — have noted that they get pretty grotty) and they are vegan-friendly. If you order them directly from Vibram, there’s a re-stocking fee; REI doesn’t carry them in our local store, but they are typically fantastic about returns, and there’s no shipping charge if you pick them up at an REI store. City Sports has them on their website, and may still carry them in their Philadelphia store, too.

Update:  April 2010 — our local REI has Five Fingers in stock, though they’ve been going fast. And Mr. Noile loves his, too.

The problem seems to be the check spring, which keeps the thread from going too slack on the front of the machine on its way to the needle.  That’s it in the picture above — the part is both the spring (normally the thread would go under the spring), and the curved metal part it’s resting on.  The check spring is catching and grabbing the thread where it shouldn’t, for some reason.

The jacket I’m working on right now is linen, so the fabric isn’t particularly demanding. As a result, I’ve been able to use my Pfaff through the expedient of bypassing the check spring, and tightening up the tension discs a bit. It’s working for this woven fabric, but the next garment in the queue will be made of silky polyester, so I’ll probably have to go back to my Singer Fashion Mate for it.

Whatever’s wrong doesn’t seem to affect the buttonhole function (in spite of the fact it’s tension-related), and I really can’t do quick, simple buttonholes with either of my other machines. So I’ve now finished the buttonholes in my black Vogue 8499 pants, and am getting on with my next garment — a Vogue jacket.

So my Pfaff is home, but it and I are kind of in limbo while I figure out the next step. Which may be ordering the part on the Internet, and slapping it in. I haven’t decided yet if this is a less-than-bright move, but the motivation level is high. The fortnight I went without this machine was not fun. If my kind-of-local shop can’t fix it, and I send it away, it could be months before I see it again. That would not be good.

Update 5/26/08 — Added photo.

My kayak’s a Wilderness Tsunami SP. The “SP” in my kayak’s name stands for “smaller paddler”. It’s designed for bigger kids on up to small adults. I’m at the top of the size range, and the seat back just didn’t work quite right for me. I needed a little more height for better support, but there’s nothing available from the manufacturer to fix the problem.

I decided to see what I could do myself. I needed something light, but somewhat stiff, to give structure to my adaptation. I needed closed-cell foam to make the support comfortable. (Closed-cell foam is critical, because the last thing you want in a boat is foam that will soak up water.) I needed some way to attach the new support to the existing seat, and the whole thing would need a cover.

Here’s what I came up with.

Finding closed-cell foam was the real challenge. I stopped at a couple of boat dealerships, and asked about buying it, but was met with blank stares. At the second dealer, I spied this boat cushion:

The sales guy was dubious: He pointed out that these cushions are filled with thin sheets of foam, not solid blocks. I was thrilled; that’s exactly what I needed, so that I could pad out my seat an eighth of an inch at a time.

I found a huge, flexible-but-sturdy plastic cutting ‘board’ in the kitchen section of IKEA for the support piece. Armed with a black marker, heavy duty shears and a roll of duct tape, I began planning.

The back on my spouse’s seat is my preferred height, so I traced its outline on the IKEA board, and cut that out. Later on, I changed my mind, and cut the seat back lower: the greater height wasn’t perfect, and the higher back was going to be an issue when loading and storing the boat. The picture above is of that higher back, but it gives you an idea of how I began to fit the seat back to the kayak.

Here’s the template I ended up using, cut from the same IKEA board:

The angled rectangles are for the webbing straps that anchor the seat back; they got cut out later.

I ripped open the boat cushion, and, using the template, cut four sheets of foam. Three were for the front of the seat, and one for behind it.

I made a sandwich of these parts: back foam sheet, the IKEA board, then three foam sheets. I duct-taped the assembly together and fit it into the kayak seat. Webbing and buckles hold the seat back to the kayak, so I cut holes in the back foam sheet for those.

The foam holes are cut a little smaller than the rectangles in the rigid IKEA board — that’s so the the webbing will rub against foam, not the sharper edges of the IKEA template, which might wear the webbing over time.

Then I clipped my duct tape ‘muslin’ in place and sat in the kayak. (This photo’s actually for the higher back, but you get the idea.)

My back mod was nice and cushy, but it flopped (literally). There was too much ‘give’ in the existing seat back. My spouse and I finagled with it, and were finally able tighten the center buckle and strap so the the existing seat back no longer moved. This involved pulling the buckle under the seat itself, but the fit was “iffy”, and it had a tendency to slip.

Which led to another mod. I added a d-ring and a webbing extension to the buckle adjustment strap, and ran it to the front of the seat, so I could make adjustments while paddling, if I needed to, since there was no way for me to reach back and pull the existing strap while in the seat. To keep the strap from disappearing, I ran a piece of PVC piping across the underside of the seat, in front, and through the loop of the strap. You can see strap and the rubber stop I put on the end of the pipe in the picture below:

My new seat back needed a cover to maintain structural integrity. Using my foam sandwich as a template, I cut a front and back from black spandex, adding flaps at the bottom to close the cover, and appropriate seam allowances. Then I cut a strip of spandex the length of the curved sides of the sandwich, plus a seam allowance on each side.

I marked slots in the spandex for the straps, and interfaced the undersides. I used hook and loop tape to close the bottom of the cover, but I’ve heard that it loosens in water, so I also added two buckles to hold the cover on the foam back. Spandex isn’t strong enough to anchor the buckle straps, so I sewed a piece of webbing to the underside of the cover before assembling it, and then attached the buckle straps to the webbing on the outside of the cover.

Here’s how the cover looks closed. There’s a gap at the center bottom for the existing kayak seat anchor, and openings in the side of the cover for existing side adjusters that came with the kayak.

From the front, the seat back looks pretty sleek:

As it does in the kayak. Here’s the front:

And here’s how the back looks in place in the kayak:

This turned out to be a fabulous fix, and the seat now fits my body perfectly. Just like this amazing, fast and sleek kayak!

When I returned from California, I hand-carried the machine onto the plane; once I was home, I put it into storage without opening it. This week, I was surprised (and horrified) to discover that several things had happened during transit. First of all, the lower part of the case had cracked and split on one end. That’s a big deal for this machine. It’s designed so that it can be used in the case, or lifted out and used in a custom table. Nicely versatile! However, I don’t have the requisite table, so I must use the case as a base.

The problem, of course, is that this machine is a tank, and it weighs like one. If you want to tip the machine back to view the underside, you first must slip support strips out from the underside of the case — otherwise, machine and case fall over backwards together. You can imagine the problem, then, once the case has cracked, since it’s barely strong enough to support the machine in the first place.

The immediate fix for the case was this belt:

It’s just a strip of webbing wrapped as tightly as possible around the case. Surprisingly, it works pretty well. Well enough, anyway. The weight of the machine still pushes the case out a little, so that the machine’s at an exaggerated angle, but I can work with that.

More problematic were two other difficulties: When the case shifted, it somehow flattened the bobbin winder stop, and the spring that belongs on the bobbin winder went AWOL. (That wasn’t too surprising; sometime long ago it had been repaired with a somewhat clumsy weld.)

I bent the bobbin winder stop back up, but you can see that the metal along the fold is cracked, and about to break:

That post rising out of the machine is the bobbin winder assembly; the curved arm behind it is the bobbin winder stop. It’s held in place with the bobbin winder stop screw, and beneath that is the bobbin winder stop screw nut. (You never know when the right words might come in handy . . . )

And here’s the bobbin winder tension bracket and thread guide, with the lump of welding where the spring used to be. You can see that it has issues in a previous life, because the machine is scratched and grubby under where the spring should be:

There was just enough of a groove in the weld on the bracket to allow thread to feed through as I sewed this week, but this arrangement wouldn’t have worked if I’d been sewing on a more finicky fabric — or with a more finicky thread. The bobbin stop was less of an issue, since it’s possible to stop the bobbin manually. I managed to make a pair of Marcy Tilton’s pants using the machine as is, but it was a kludgy arrangement. The next garment, though, is definitely made from more sensitive material, so a fix was critical.

An Internet search turned up a fantastic parts list at TNT Repair. It was for slightly newer machines than my 237, but the schematic was pretty much the same, and it gave me the vocabulary I needed to describe the parts. I couldn’t order the spring from them, though, not only because I needed it immediately, but because my machine doesn’t seem to be in their inventory. Their extensive lists — culled, it seems, from old Singer service manuals — did make parts identification easy, and I will be keeping them in mind for accessories or parts I might need in the future, if I can’t find them locally.

Once I knew what to call the missing part, I called up Trev Hayes of Hayes Sewing Machines in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington’s far enough from my home that I don’t get there too often, but when I do, I always stop in at Hayes. They carry a full line of Kwik Sew, Lazy Girl Designs and a few other independent patterns, tons of machine accessories and embroidery and purse-making notions and an especially good selection of cottons. They’re also very helpful and friendly; it’s a family-owned store, and it shows.

Best of all, though, is that Trev Hayes repairs machines in his shop. I removed both parts from the machine, wrote a list of the parts involved (so that I’d know what I was talking about), and printed photos of the damage, since I really didn’t want to haul the machine around. (The case would never have survived.) Thus armed, I took off for Wilmington.

Trev Hayes took a look at the parts and announced that he’d get the “boneyard”. I knew exactly what he meant — my parts numbers were probably useless, since it wasn’t very likely anyone had an inventory anywhere. But there was a box of parts cannibalized from decommissioned machines in the back of the shop, and that’s where my hopes rested.

Mr. Hayes pulled a chair up to a table, handed me the box, and I plunged right in. Much to my happiness, I found the critical piece — the bobbin winder tension bracket and thread guide — almost immediately. No gold rush miner could have been more pleased — and I think Trev Hayes was just as tickled as I was!

I didn’t find the bobbin stop, but that I can live without. I did some shopping while I was at the store (and even found some super-light sew-in interfacing I’d been searching for fruitlessly elsewhere), and then headed home. Replacing the parts wasn’t difficult; it just took care, patience, and careful use of a pair of tweezers — the inverse of the procedure I’d used to remove them.

So now my back-up machine is back in business. Here’s how that spring is supposed to look:

I always spend too much when I go to Hayes, but experiences like these are a vivid reminder of how much more an independent store, owned and run by someone who really loves and understands his work, offers those of us who feel the same about what we do. There’s no Trev Hayes at a place like JoAnn’s — in fact, there’s hardly even anyone who sews. It’s important to do what we can to keep these independent stores alive — a world full of nothing but JoAnn’s would be a grim place indeed.

What I don’t like, though, is the stiff, unforgiving, rubbery feeling of the Keen bag. It’s puffy around the edges, and probably wouldn’t feel very nice to wear — unless you’re really, really into industrial chic. I love my Keen shoes, but I think carrying this bag would be a little like wearing the shoes on my arm.

Fortunately I sew, and this basic design is simple (even, you might say, timeless, except for the lengthened straps). (I know, it’s all wrinkled in the picture. 100% cotton — go figure. Yes, the photographer was too lazy to re-iron it for the photo shoot.)

I whipped up this muslin from memory, and was really happy with it. Well, except for the fabric, maybe. That lining is not weaving’s finest hour. (But now it is out of my stash!)

This style was a natural for a reversible bag, and the full lining meant that I could have a total of six hidden pockets. There’s just one main pattern piece, which I drafted on freezer paper:

I cut two pieces of each fabric. I installed invisible zippers in the center seams of the main fabric and the lining, and added an extra layer of cloth between the main fabric and the lining in the body of the bag to divide the space into two separate pockets, accessed by the zippers on each side.

I cut small pockets to insert into the widest part of the shoulder strap, and then put one more invisible zipper in each inner strap seam, making small hidden pockets in the strap.

I assembled the bag like a vest. The shoulder strap is quite wide; much to my surprise, when I saw the Keen bag after I’d made mine, I’d actually gauged its width within an eighth of an inch of the Keen’s. I’m not sure how the width works on the original bag, as the strap is fairly stiff. I fold mine in half to wear it, which is very comfortable.

The exaggerated length of the strap is a lot of fun, but not as practical as it could be (especially since I’m short). I’ll definitely make this bag again, but will probably shorten the strap a little. And I need to work on my invisible zipper technique; I had some trouble with the short zippers set into the curve.

I melted the ends of the webbing with a small lighter to keep them from fraying. It’s usually a good idea to seal any holes in webbing the same way, but I didn’t bother in this case, since the minimal stress on the straps isn’t too likely to cause the holes to widen. Sewing the buckles on was easy and quick; I’ve used webbing and buckles for a ton of projects in the past.

The larger kayak (on the bottom) weighs 55 pounds; the smaller one just 35. The combined weight is no problem for either the webbing or the buckles, but each kayak is resting in its own loop just to be sure.

I attached the straps to the ceiling studs; two screws (each with a washer) anchor the longer set of straps. The shorter straps are anchored, with just one screw and washer, midway between the screws for the longer straps. I drilled pilot holes in the overhead 2×4s before attaching the straps, and made holes in the webbing by pushing screws through it before assembling things.

I put vertical 2×4s strategically to keep the kayaks from hitting the cinder block wall. That probably wasn’t necessary: As it turns out, slipping the boats in and out without hitting the wall isn’t any problem.

Assembly took about a fifteen minutes or so, and was so satisfying. More storage, and I didn’t even have to clean the garage! Whooo hoo!