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Thursday, August 13, 2015

A Welding Apron

The latest stitch has been nothing snuggly or pretty.
It's actually been something very useful.
Mr. LB is a metal fabricator,
and in addition to using his great math skills,
he spends plenty of time behind a torch.
Of course sparks fly,
and it's not uncommon for him to come home with holes
burnt out of his clothes.
We try to find his work clothes at thrift stores,
but it can still be discouraging when he has a nice pair of work jeans
and burns them up the first day he wears them.
When thrifting, finding his size doesn't always happen.
Shirts are a little easier to find,
but the wear on his clothes far exceeds most normal people.
Here's where teamwork comes in handy.
I happen to know how to stitch.
While on the look out for more jeans,
I found a leather coat.
I bought the coat and proceeded to make an apron for him.
The apron was actually his idea,
and I kinda just ran with it.
For the body of the apron, I used the back of the coat.
Then from the remainder made the straps, etc.

It has a rectangle clip for his tape-measure
and is low enough in front that he can still get to his pen & soapstone.
After wearing it for one day,
he said he wanted it to have a belt sewn in.
He initially didn't want one, because he wanted it to be easy
to get on and off.
He found that it falls forward without a belt,
especially if his tape-measure is hanging on it.
The picture was taken before the belt was added.
So far so good.
Now, we'll just have to see how long it wears.

I have an old solid machine that I used for this project.
If your sewing machine is new and/or has a nice fine stitch
that you don't want to ruin, I would
think twice about sewing leather with it.

Until next time,
Nimble Fingers and Even Stitches

4 comments:

  1. what a good idea and great recycling

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great idea :-)
    My husband is a tig welder/metal fabricator also. Not long ago I bought him a couple pairs of dickies double layered work jeans, and so glad I am. You should see his jeans before....they had soooooooo many darning repairs that it was almost more repair and patches than jeans. Yikes!
    I'll show him this apron...I think he'll like it 👍
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a clever idea to make the apron out of the coat. Thank you for sharing with the Clever Chicks Blog Hop! I hope you’ll join us again next week!

    Cheers,
    Kathy Shea Mormino
    The Chicken Chick
    http://www.The-Chicken-Chick.com

    ReplyDelete