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Nothing compared to Mike's collection, but I though I might share this pair of white drill work pants here.

Metal suspender and fly buttons. Note that fly buttons are stitched with black thread; suspenders w/white. This is because the fly buttons are hidden from view, but the stitch that attaches the suspenders button shows through the waistband.

Selvedge outseam. It is not ironed flat ("busted") like jeans; I'm holding it open. Note the fabric defect just below my finger.

A dart shapes the top-block; it's hidden by the beltloop. You can kind of see a "z" stitch at the top and bottom of the beltloop...

Detail of "z." I wonder why it's done this way?

Side pocket detail. Cool "arrow" construction.

Hem (handstitched?). Note big honking fabric defect.

And another by the knee.

As you can see these pants are totally unimproved; they don't even have back pockets let alone back pocket rivets. I wonder if this pair is a descendent of the east-coast made, unreinforced, pre-denim-dungarees work pants that Mike refers to in his book.

http://risingsunjeans.com/2010/10/15/making-pants-for-nigel

Super cool news from the rising sun blog.

hope this comes to fruition!

Sorry to quote myself, but it's worth pointing out that the RS blog post is titled "Making Pants for Nigel," which is hilarious.

If you don't get the joke, here's the punchline.

No pictures, but today my jeans and I saw the movie "Nowhere Boy," about the early adult life of John Lennon. It was really good all by itself, and as a bonus there was a ton of great period-correct denim in it. Recommended!

http://risingsunjeans.com/2010/10/15/making-pants-for-nigel

Super cool news from the rising sun blog.

hope this comes to fruition!

Can you take a picture of your yardage and post it? Sounds pretty cool.

Some photos of my vintage mattress ticking fabric.

It's in two pieces; the top piece here was cut in half lengthwise so it has only one selvedge edge. The bottom piece is selvedge-to-selvedge.

The edge. Also note some fading on the indigo stripes.

Some details of irregularities in the fabric:

The gross part: the back has a sueded texture from, I presume, being full of feathers in a previous life.

It looks filthy but as best as I can tell it's clean. I hot-soaked the yardage when I got it and the water wasn't especially murky afterwards. The nap rubs off:

Some thread is still stitched into the fabric at various points.

Definitely cotton thread, which makes me think the fabric is pretty old. People don't use cotton thread so much anymore, right? Because poly or nylon is easier to work with?

Just anecdotally -- my best vintage find so far is ~14 yards of old, used mattress ticking fabric. The face side is in really good condition with lots of slubs and loom chatter. The back side is clean, but it has a pile raised, in some spots as fine as velvet or suede. My conjecture is that it was actually used as a mattress or pillow for most of its life, and that the abrasive action of the down filling (or cornhusk filling, or whatever) raised the surface fibers. I am going to make something out of it one of these days.

I have a Wrangler Blue Bell jacket with the stitched rivets...it's from the 1950's. Might be able to tell better on this one if

there were a better pic of the label.

Tell what better?

Here's the only label on the jacket. No other size labeling or care instructions or nothing.

I think thats a rat snake but you can never be too careful! Great pictures everybody!

Nah, it's just an eastern plains garter snake. Not venomous, but garters are notorious for defensive excretion. They will shit on you if you pick them up.

Some pictures of two vintage Boy Scout backpacks I have, both made of duck cloth.

Yucca Pack (l) and Day Pack ®. The yucca pack was near-deadstock; you can see that the day pack has lightened with use.

The printed Boy Scout emblem on the day pack has stretched from a circle into an oval.

Fabric is so tightly woven, water rolls off of it. Even after sixty-some years of existence. This stuff is not treated with wax or oil. Pretty impressive I think!

Closure technology on the Day Pack. Not the most convenient, but it does the job.

I use the Day Pack every day (so it's not just a clever name). Right now it has my work shoes in it. You can see a selvedge edge on the fabric there.

The Yucca Pack is a member of the canoe pack family. It has an extra welt pocket on the closure flap. (This one also has some cat hair contributed by my two fat lazy cats).

Another selvedge edge on the inside of the Yucca Pack's flap pocket. I know that selvedge isn't everything, but there is a little thrill when I find it "in the wild," so to speak. Plus seeing this makes me imagine a pair of pants made from this cloth, with selvedge outseams. Doesn't that sound great?

The strap construction is really cool. I wonder why they used an eyelet, not a rivet?

Attaching the strap to the bottom of the bag. A stamped brass clip. The hardware on both bags is a mixture of stamped brass and rolled / cast brass.

Since I don't do much canoe-packing, the Yucca pack is just a storage unit right now--holding the rest of my vintage collection. The label for the company that made these bags is pretty cool. "Diamond Brand Canvas Craft."

Mike, is that a photo of 2x1 denim next to 3x1? Or is it the back and front of a single piece of denim?

It would be really educational to see a picture of 2x1 and 3x1 side by side -- if you have a spare minute.

btw whats with the extra thread that sticks out from the end of some of the sweater's cuffs??? i dont quite get the point of them.

anyone can enlighten me?

It's like chainstitch runoff on repro workshirts. Somebody (japanese) found a vintage shirt with the overlock runoff and, in their zeal to reproduce the garment exactly, left little bits poking off the end of the sleeves.

Or alternately, in their zeal to reproduce the shirt exactly, they used the exact same production techniques and found that there's a reason for things like that.

Back in the day runoff was a matter of efficient production. Pieces were often sewn in batches, like these fly-pieces being made for Rodeo Bill's Tender Co. blue jeans:

You can see how it would be more efficient to make a single cut between each piece, leaving some overlock runoff, than to make two cuts and leave relatively clean edges. It would even be more efficient to make two quick cuts, each leaving a little runoff, than to carefully cut as close to the fabric as possible, leaving no runoff. I speculate that essentially the same thing happened with vintage sweatshirts.

I also speculate that a little bit of runoff helps to prevent the stitch from unravelling. Don't know about that for sure though.

Here's a picture of a vintage Penny's Towncraft sweatshirt I have with overlock runoff:

He would probably start paying people to post those questions for him.

Speaking of that, I want fit pics too.

And some quick fit pics:

I put on one of my vintage work aprons briefly:

Some lower shots:

I really love the way these fit when worn as overalls -- I was wearing a tee shirt, thick flannel, chore jacket, and Samurai 710s under them. But I struggle to think when I'll be able to wear them. They are really painter's overalls (Roundhouse still sells the same overalls, MUSA), and unfortunately I'm a scenic carpenter, not a scenic painter. Hopefully I'll get out of New York and into some rural or painterly situation sometime soon.

Unless anyone else can make a compelling argument for ownership? Roundhouse x Rodeo Bill Indigo-Splashed Overalls World Tour?

Here are some other pictures--the vintage roundhouse overalls that I gave to William. He did a little indigo dyeing in them and sent them back.

I think it's interesting--the indigo dye on these is a rough negative of the wear on a pair of blue jeans; instead of indigo wearing off of high-contact areas, it was added on.

Since the first time I saw it I've loved Roundhouse's logo; in Ohio you actually see barns with things like that written on the roof. So is this [a picture of a roundhouse] with the name written on it, or [a picture of a roundhouse with the name written on it]?

I've also loved Tender's logo since first sight. Why does this dude look so...not stoked? What artist drew him this way?

The waistband:

Right thigh:

Right back pocket (with external care/sizing label!):

The size: 40 waist, 32 leg.

Green from the oxidized copper hardware

Red and yellow spots. Red was, I think, there when I gave them to William. Could the yellow be weld?

Maybe the most notable part of the vintage fabrics I've handled -- even more than selvedge edges -- is the character and unevenness in the fabric. Here, inside the pocket, you can see how the slubs in this apparently normal white twill would pick up dirt over time, ultimately giving it much more textured appearance.

Powr House pleat-front denim jackt (vintage)

Woolrich plaid cotton flannel (vintage)

Hanes pocket tee (gray)

Samurai 710

And briefly:

The above

plus

Roundhouse x Rodeo Bill woad-splashed overalls

And even more briefly:

The above

plus

Unbranded work apron (vintage)

Layering is supposed to be big this fall, right?

Today my jeans and I chilled out on my back terrace, taking digital photos of my vintage collection and a few other things. Mostly for my own entertainment, also for some threads on here. Here are some excerpts/previews:

after that intro, here are detail shots:

Placket, pleats, and right pocket:

Reverse, with selvedge edge:

Same details on the left placket:

I think this jacket must have been a budget option back when it was made (which I estimate as mid-sixties at the very very earliest). Notice the false "rivets" that hold the pleats--really just a little blob of satin stitching. The denim is lightweight and spongy.

Even so, it has great buttonholes:

And solid interior double-chainstitched contruction:

Although one seam has slipped, unfortunately:

Here's an indigo thread from that frayed edge:

I'm sure everyone knows this, but here's how fading works: tightly wound cotton threads are dyed in indigo. They look blue:

But the dye doesn't penetrate all the way through the threads. So as the surface of the thread wears away, and the threads loosen, the cotton-white center of the thread becomes visible:

Last weekend I shared some photos of myself wearing a vintage pleat-front denim jacket to work. A couple people expressed interest in it, so here are some more photos.

Here are fit pictures, unfortunately a bit out of focus:

I usually wear it like so. Dig the super-low pockets:

And sometimes button all the way up like so:

As you can see the front is lower than the back; i guess this matches roughly with blue jeans, which tend to be higher at the back and lower at the front. For this reason, it always looks better with shirttails tucked in:

In all of those previous photos, you can see a little white blob moving around on the collapsed wooden table behind me. That little white blob was this guy:

I put him back on a tree.

Mike, is the pattern on this ^^^ fabric regular? Does it repeat, or are the indigo v. white threads just random? Curious how it would look from a distance -- I'm picturing vertical lines of indigo fading in and out, so to speak, like an ombre plaid.

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Cool, over-the-yoke pockets like Rodeo Bill's Tender Co. jeans. These have all sorts of interesting improvements -- reinforced crotch w/rivet, "patented continuous fly," those nice single-needle arcuates. And it looks like the back pockets are cut on the bias? Is that common?

Not bad eh?

Yuketens at Oi Polloi

We have the 900s in the shop I work at. I try them on all the time. Actually come to think of it I owe Rodeo Bill some photos of them all merched out.

How did you guys size yours? I'm thinking I'd size up from 3 to 4; I need the extra arm length. Also I find a dropped shoulder looks "right" for this particular jacket, and because of the high armholes and and cinch straps you can still get a lot of shape into it. Did y'all choose true-to-size?

Has anyone here ever waxed denim like Eltopo did his jacket?

I imagine it wouldn't work as well because most denim has a relatively open weave (certainly compared to jungle cloth it does). Since the weave is more open, there's actually less surface area inside the cloth for the paraffin to soak into.

That's my theory anyway. Has anyone tried it?

That is gnarly DK. My sister got back from the ol' UG about a month ago. She brought me a ton of genuine wax-print African fabric, some of which has GENUINE WAX-PRINT AFRICA FABRIC printed along the selvedge.

Following up on my post from yesterday:

This is what I looked like when I set out at 12am to go strike the Kid Cudi stage.

It had cooled down a lot, so I decided to try out the button-all-the-way-up. This did not last long.

Waiting for the train I took a picture of the selvedge on my jean jacket.

And the big bummer of the evening: while putting on my boot, the gusseted tongue tore, visible here. Still functional, but when I heard that rrriiipppp sound, my heart tore a little bit too.

Got to the job sight at 1am. It's a dance studio / performance space that's frequently rented out for fashion shows and other events. Cudi had played his set but the party was still going, as you can see from this photo of a video monitor of the party. Turns out it was a shindig for Details Magazine and the Cudder was just making a guest appearance.

Half an hour later the party was still going. We were waiting in the offices to be able to strike the stage. Suddenly we heard roughhousing in the studio. The party was only supposed to be in the performance space, not the studio, so we immediately feared the worst: drunk white people looking for a place to have sex. BUT NO, it was Cudi and his entourage trying to find a place to get blazed. The tech director told 'em to scram. I had hoped to meet Cudi somehow, because we went to the same high school and he was buds with my older sister. No such luck tho.

About two hours later we'd struck the stage and cleaned up all the broken glass and spilled booze.

And this is me back on my street, one tired puppy.

It's also used on the satchel. This is what it will look like all buckled up:

This morning I went to my first carpentry call since breaking my ankle back in June. Installed a soundstage for a concert tonight; going back to load it out at 1am.

Ankle felt solid but the rest of me was pretty rusty after chillin on my couch for two months thanks to worker's comp. My first action back on the job was to give myself a fat lip with a socket wrench--it slipped off the bolt I was tightening and I whanged myself in the face pretty good.

Wish I'd thought to bring a real camera. But then I was working pretty hard so who knows if I could've taken pictures. Here are cell phone pictures after I got back home:

Amazing turn-ups on this snack-cart guy:

Walking through Theodore Roosevelt Park, looking at the Phineas & Sandra Rose Priest Center (Pres. Obama ate dinner here Thursday night, totally fucked up my bus route):

It's warm as hell in New York again, the urban wildlife is loving it. Hard to see but this photo is full of grackles bathing in a leaky-hose-puddle. After starlings, grackles are my favorite city bird:

Corgis are in this season:

I had wanted to get a Shake Shack hotdog after the morning's work...I was not the only one with that idea. Not worth waiting for.

They're repaving Columbus; it looks like a lava flow.

I liked how clear my shadow was, so I took a picture of it

This is what I wore to work. My samurai 710s shrank too much after a machine wash so i can't wear 'em to work anymore. The pleat-front jacket is vintage, made by Montgomery Ward. Boots are vintage Chippewas. The balance is J.Crew, probably.

It turns out the stage we built is for a secret Kid Cudi concert. If you're in New York and you want to crash it, the address is 547 West 26th. I'll bring a better camera and try to take some pictures of load-out, if it's appropriate.