Hundred Mile Closet

     I have a full-size, shuttle loom. It belonged to my Grandmother. It's likely a far cry from the kimono loom in the video above, but I plan to get it up and running this summer. Imagine working with selvage denim made in-house? Imagine wearing jeans made from cloth woven just up the street? 

     I've been thinking about this idea for a while and was really excited to come across the videos from the Japanese denim brand Momotaro.  They even dye their own cloth! I won't get too carried away (yet), but in house cloth production, even on a supplemental scale, is something I'd really like to work towards. 

     Judging from the videos I found on Youtube, Momotaro denim isn't exclusively a hand-woven denim company either. At 8 hours of labour per meter and about 3 meters of fabric per pair of jeans, I can only imagine how many years it would take to fill a store let alone keep it stocked. 

     The video below is also from Momotaro. Look at those machines! I like this level of automation -the machines are assisting the people in contrast to the videos I posted earlier this week where the opposite seems to be true. Very inspiring!

75 Pockets

     The machines in this video are totally brilliant in a mad scientist kind of way but a little frightening in what they're doing to consumer expectations.  I wonder what the human/machine production ratio is 10 : 1? At any rate, this video sheds some light on what's behind the new standard.

Reinventing

Another blog for the internets: this one for sharing what I've come across trying to learn as much as I can about the needle trade. I hope you find it useful.

Here's a video I came across the other day. It's all about factory made jeans. I make jeans, too, but only a handful at a time. Do they take me 15 minutes to make? Try the better part of a day each depending on style, number of pieces and how many small distractions are pulling at my pant legs. Am I slow? Not at all -I'm just not fully automated.