Sew’mups

I’ve been using a lacklustre toiletry bag for my sewing kit for about 15 years. I guess it sort of did the trick, but it was lacking in many ways. I often thought that I should gut the interior and rebuild it. But it always ended up on the back burner. I jokingly figured I would finish all the other things I wanted to make, finally tackle it ... and then never make anything else. Figured I would make much more in the years to come and that I owed it to myself to come up with something that really worked.

The Sew’mups.

Let’s get the most important feature out of the way first: the all important velcro patch panel. Size wise, it’s 24 cm (9½") high, 16.5 cm (6½") wide, and 7.5 cm (3") deep.

The back features PALS webbing. Partly for attaching to packs and bags, but also to serve as a slot to house a pair of scissors and forceps. The latter both for pulling a needle, but also to serve as a fid and end grabber for doing paracord work. It can also serve as a precision clamp.

This top view shows the fur coat closure system I use to prevent the two tools from falling out. (They’re called “fur clips” {pelzhaken in German}. Prym makes it, and the product code for it in black is 416502, although it is also available in brown and beige.) The ring was sewn between the two ends of the ½" webbing, and the metal clasp was sewn to the top of the pouch. I’ve done it on a few medical pouches and it works very nicely. 

And a close up of the lanyard knots I used for the zipper pulls.

 The two sides. I used a #10 zipper, which is probably over kill, but I had this and didn’t feel like making a trip just to get a smaller zipper. (And you’ll see white positioning marks everywhere. They’ll fade in time.)

Bottom. It’s not actually that lumpy and misshapen.

Okay, the outside is a pretty straightforward rectangular pouch. Let’s get on to the juicy bits, the interior.

I wanted to be able to open it right up and lay it flat. Yet, if I had it attached to a bag or pack, it could fall open and nothing would fall out.

The front panel features CLASP (Cord Lattice Attachment System Pattern), paracord with the cores taken out and sewn in a matrix. I can attach bunjee cord to this to hold spools of thread (Coats Upholstery for the most part) and film canisters with (rarely used) safety pins, and (often used) rubber thimbles. Also put a Filzer I‑Beam X‑90 flashlight in there.

In the bottom I attached these ITW-Nexus PipeDoc Sternum Sliders. And I used them in a completely different way than they were ever intended to be used.

How I intend to use them is as a spindle for a spool of thread. A piece of paracord with a button knot in one end as a stopper. The bunjee is fine for storing thread, but for the thread that I’m using for a given project, and will use for a while usually, I wanted to have easier access to.

Paracord goes through the spool, slide the paracord through the piping holder and finish it off with a figure 8 to serve as a stopper knot on the other end. Works very nicely so far.

Behind this is a slot to house a sketchbook. I use it for sketching ideas, visually solving problems, scribbling down measurements and calculations, etc.

The back panel.

Trying to figure out slots to house all the myriad of tools is a pain in the butt. Not to mention, I might use different tools sometimes for different tasks, purchase different tools that are a different size, etc. So what I came up with in the Exploriment Laboratories is an exciting new modular attachment system known as VREE – Velcro Repositionable Exchangeable Equipment. (My 4th modular attachment system for anyone keeping count, after Thomas’ Attachable Bag System, Belt Attachment Lowerable Loop System and Cord Lattice Attachment System Pattern.)

Each tool has a pocket made of hook Velcro on the back, and loop Velcro on the front. This way I can position them where I like, remove them, stack them on top of each other, etc.

 A closeup of one of the pouches. Not at all fancy. I’ve been adding a piece of webbing and a bit of velcro on it to help hold the contents in place.

I still intend to make a few more pockets, but to give you an idea:
Top row: Olfa retractable knife, Dritz measuring gauge, 6" metal ruler, and needles in the loop Velcro with a piece of loop Velcro over that to hold them in place. (One of the things I still have to make are some pockets for pencil lead holders that I use to hold needles. But these are the ones I use most frequently, so I thought it made sense to have them be easily accessible.), and while it’s folded out of the way in this picture, you can see it in the one above, a Victorinox Classic.
Bottom row: extra blades for the Olfa knife, A Staedtler Mars Technico drafting pencil – I like these partly because the plunger contains a semi-decent sharpener (will get a second one for which I’m trying to find white lead), Victorinox SwissCard scissors, a measuring tape, bic lighter, candle in a tin, and a white Sakura GellyRoll marker.

Closeup of the holder for the measuring tape.

A tea light I pressed into a small tin. If I have to singe the ends of a lot of webbing or material or cord, I prefer to do it with a candle. Keep a lighter lit for a long time and it quickly gets hot enough to burn your thumb. Plus it’s a waste of the fuel. I have loads of tea light candles I’d prefer to use up before I use up disposable lighters or butane.

Closeup of the needles in the loop Velcro.

Let me just put this picture up again to show another feature, the Bulldog Tails. I use binder clips a lot. I used to store them in M&M tubes. When I work on something, as I sew an area, I start removing the bulldog clips. Rather than put them back in the tubes, I would just toss them in the bag, or clip them to things. Not a great solution. This way I can store them, have easy access both to getting them and also putting them back. Plus it’s just more streamlined than the tubes. I can flip them out of the way to get at the tools underneath.

To prevent them flipping and flapping too much, I put clips on the bottom of them, which attach to a loop of paracord.

And in a slot pocket behind I have a cutting mat. Not an item I’ll use so much, but still really useful to have. And it gives some rigidity to the pouch.

And it’s still roughly the same size as the old pouch, probably even a bit smaller.

Mounted on the Messenge’mups. Not an ideal arrangement, but it works.

Steampunk Sewing Arm Bracer

I find steam punk kind of interesting, but then I realize the dork factor is just way too high. Not to mention the sameness of a lot of it. For every breathtaking steampunk Mac (and some of the other projects on the right hand side as well), there are a surfeit of uninspired watch gears hot glue gunned on to something, and that’s supposed to suffice.

Came across this one though that made me chuckle. Too dorky for me to even contemplate ever wearing, even if I made a PALS covered Cordura version. But as a guy hooked on DIY and who hand sews a whole hell of a lot, I appreciate it. A wearable hussif if you will. (A link to the makers Etsy site if you’re inclined to order one.)

And making me reassess just how dorky I think steampunk is.........

My Most Days Sewing Kit

(I guess I can’t really call it my Every Day Sewing Kit, since I technically don’t carry it every day.)

I’ve been using this Jack Wolfskin toiletry bag for almost a decade. (Considering my toiletry kit for a week can fit in my hand, this thing is way too big for its intended purpose.) Needing something to keep all my sewing stuff in, I looked in the gear bin, and this seemed appropriate.

I added some tabs with metal sliders so that I could mount it to the outside of a pack, if I needed some extra space in the bag. 

In this case a Kifaru E&E.

Looping them through a PALS channel – one of the dozens of ways to mount pouches.

Another way to mount them in a Kifaru pack is from the Lock&Load Loops.

The interior isn’t really ideal for its intended purpose, but it has sufficed.

In the little pockets at the top that are meant for bottles of shampoo and the like, is where I keep spools of thread and also containers of needles.

The 5 at the front are Coats upholstery thread, and the 2 at the top are Coats all-purpose thread. Coats is infinitely better than Guttermans.

The upholstery I use all the time, and the all-purpose only for very light use. Mainly the black and the brown, since the other three come out almost white in use. They’re handy though when I want to have two distinct stitch lines, if they’re really close to one another. One dark, one light. If one is only a temporary stitch, meant to be removed later for instance.

I use needles mainly out of the black topped case, and then the blue one. The yellow topped case has small needles good only for very light work. The red topped container actually has sewing machine needles.

And I recommend that you find John James needles, as they are of a much higher quality. Not too surprisingly, the quality of needles has really gone down hill in the last few years, as everything is moved off to China to be produced.

There was a hook that you could hang the toiletry kit up with, which I promptly removed and replace with a split key ring. Attached to it is a squeeze light and a Victorinox Ambassador.

Gift from my sister in law from the Home Hardware she works at in lovely Digby, Scova Notia.

Oh, and a note for any aspiring sewers. Cut your thread. I can’t stress that enough! Cut it with scissors. Don’t wind the thread between two hands and yank it to break it. Don’t gnaw on it with your teeth. Don’t saw away at it with a dull pocket knife. Cut it with scissors!

(Slight tangent here - I see all these suggestions on forums about sewing kits (often from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about) about things that should go in a sewing kit. “You should put some uber high-tech mono-filament line in there. It has like some crazy high breaking strength!” If they had tried it they wouldn’t suggest it. And if Kifaru doesn’t sew their bags with anything other than 92lb. Mil-Spec thread, I figure that’s a clue.)

Along those lines I have people telling me that I should get one of those needle threaders. You know the little diamond of wire with a cameo of a woman on the handle part. I’m sure they work, but I have threaded a needle, thousands, tens of thousands of times without one. Hhhmmmhhh... Maybe I have the patience of a saint, eyes like a hawk, the steady hands of a surgeon, but I have never had a problem threading a needle. And I have done it a lot. Get one if you want, but I think the main reason why I never have a problem threading a needle is because I cut my thread. It is a nice, clean end, very easy to fit through the eye. When you gnaw it, break it, the end is very rough, hence difficult and frustrating to thread. Cut your needle with a sharp pair of scissors!

In the centre divider are four elastic loops in which I have binder clips and safety pins.

Small binder clips.

Medium binder clips. Both sizes are really handy.

A whole lot of safety pins that I rarely ever use.

Another thing I use a lot are rubber thimbles, the type you find in an office supply store.

In the mesh pocket I keep a miscellany of items. Some are in there more or less permanently, and others are slated for the particular project I happen to be working on.

The tape measure, Olfa knife, grey pencil and sharpener, rubber thimbles and sewing gauge are some of my go to tools, whereas the seam tape, 550 cord, GrimLocs, Siamese Slik-Clips, button and cord lock were in there on the day I took the picture. A month later it would be a different assortment of odds and ends.

There are a couple of other tools I use for my sewing projects, but they are kept in a tool box at home. A plain old paper punch and a drill bit used in printing for drilling holes in paper (the latter being a tube with beveled ends). Both are used to punch holes in material for drain holes. I also have a seam ripper and a Stewart Speedy Stitcher. None of them are  tools I use on a regular basis. For the most part, I prepare the project I’m working on at home. Cut the material, and the webbing, and singe the ends. Cut the holes, singe them. Cut anything else I might need, singe it. For years I spent hours a day commuting to work, so this kit worked nicely to contain and carry everything. It could hold all the components of whatever project I was working on, and hold all the tools I would need to work on it. 


I commuted to work in Toronto on the train, and that was part of the reason why I cut and singed everything ahead of time. The cutting, well, I can’t very well spread out a few yards of Cordura on the train. But the singeing was done, because it smells really obnoxious, and also because I imagine that a very large guy, with tattoos and piercings, wearing army pants and a freaky tattoo shop shirt and working on something somewhat military-ish looking, might induce panic amongst the Oakvillians if they saw him lighting the ends of  para-cord. Best to do that in the privacy of my own home. 


I had plans to take out the interior and build a better set up, more organized and compartmentalized, but given the back log of other DIY projects I have, it always got pushed back to some point well into the future. Finally created the Sew’mups. Much better.