Hey everybody, welcome back to Man Sewing. I certainly hope you had a fantastic week.
I did. Now why did I have such a good week, you’re asking. Because I’ve been drinking
coffee and sewing all week. That’s right today’s tutorial is our awesome coffee travel
kit. Now with this awesome coffee travel kit, right? I want you to be thinking what else
can I put in a cool travel kit. Rob is a coffee-a-holic and he travels so much that I need to have
some way to make a fresh pot all the time. But as I’m showing you this today, I want
you to be thinking what else you can make your travel kit for. So one of my things is
I’ve always had one of these cool French press mugs, right? that I can make coffee
on the go. But because I fly so much, I can’t travel any longer with my cool little backpack
or stove. You can’t take the compressed fuel on the plane. So grandfather, this one
is for you. I went out and got myself one of these wonderful, like 300 watt cup heaters.
It’s like literally drops in your cup, heats up the water for you. And my grandfather used
to always have this at the table. He loves a piping hot cup of coffee. And yes, the last
bite of dessert must go with the last sip of coffee. So we keep it warm the entire time.
So this whole kit was fashioned around these size supplies. So again, think about what
you’re going to put in here. I have my heater. Of course I have a Tupperware full of fresh
coffee grounds. Keeps it nice and tidy and fresh and clean for me. And then I also have
an easy spoon. There’s one other thing that I actually designed into this though. And
that was a work surface. Coffee can make a mess. And this fiber is called Kraft Tex and
it actually takes care of moisture and all of that for you as you’re working. So let’s
get this cup out of the way and tell you more about Kraft Tex.
I didn’t know a thing about this stuff and it is super cool. Fairly new fiber. I think
it comes from C&T Publishing actually. And it is a 54 inch wide by 19 inch package when
you purchase it and this is all you need for today’s tutorial. Well, I’m going to show
you a little bit of an elastic at the end but that’s not a big deal. You can use all
kinds of different closures. But yes, for our coffee kit or travel kit basically one
roll will make several of these. So again, 19 by 54 inches wide. To make my entire base
and my pocket system, I actually started with a piece that was 19 inches by 22 inches. So
let me show you that real quick.
Now before I walk you through the steps of creating your own travel kit there’s a couple
things I want you to think about. Now yes, you saw me I leaked a picture on Facebook
last week. Thanks for following along. Yes, Man Sewing has the best fans ever. And one
of the questions was, does it come in other colors? And it certainly does. Kraft Tex comes
in five colors now and I love them because they’re all manly. The other nice thing
about these is you can actually paint or draw on top of Kraft Tex as well. And so I want
to show you my two finished samples real quick. One of these here is a washed sample. And
the other is an unwashed sample. And let me explain washing. What I do for the washing
is I take that whole 19 inch by 22 inch piece that I’ve already cut off of the roll, right?
19 inch roll. I cut it off of the roll and then I soaked it in a bucket of water. I’m
not putting this in a washing machine. And I’m not putting it in a dryer. But I soaked
it overnight in a bucket of water. And I kept coming out there and kind of massaging the
fiber with the water to get it in there. And then I let it drip dry and sit on a towel
for about a day let’s say. Just so it was nice and dry. It didn’t take very long actually.
I just wanted to make sure. I had never used it before. So then I was playing with that
whole 19 inch by 22 inch chunk and I was just rolling it and wadding it and rolling it and
wadding it. So that I would get this really cool texture, right? So this kind of to me
looks like leather. So this is my statement about Kraft Tex is it feels like paper. It
can look, after washed, like leather. It sews like butter but wears like iron. Check this
out, I can’t even tear this stuff. I love it.
So with that said, now the steps for creating your coffee kit or whatever kind of travel
kit you want. And remember this is the method you’re watching the numbers will be custom
for whatever you are building. So from that 19 by 22 I have actually cut down a couple
of slices. This first piece is my base piece. This is the entire background for the whole
kit and it is a 12 by 22 inch cut. And then the first piece we’re going to actually
handle was the five by 22 inch cut. With our five inch strip I have just hand folded over
about a half of an inch. And then what I actually did is I took the back end of my rotary cutter
and I pressed this to kind of create a crease or a seam line that just made it easier for
me to stitch with. And then I did, I just stitched down the line. And a couple of things
with set up for a sewing machine. You do not need any kind of heavy duty needle or anything
like that for your machine. But I used a fun thread that would look cool kind of like an
old leather bag. And then I actually set it for a triple stitch. So my machine is doing
multiple stitches at once so it looks really thick and heavy like old leather, you know,
like the cords you get on your dog and cat food bag of food, you know that kind of thing.
So with that, triple stitch but also lengthen my stitch length up a little bit so that I’m
not perforating the fiber as much. So about a 3.0, 3.5 stitch length on most machines.
It’s a really nice suggestion.
So back to construction. With that you’ve got parallel seams running down just like
that. This piece is ready to go. To our 12 by 22 or our base piece, I took and measured
up five inches from the bottom all the way to the top here so that’s five inches and
then I also marked in at half inch seam allowances. And the pencil mark is going to be invisible
but probably could also be erased down the road if you needed it to. I’m just going
to sew over the top of it basically. And what I’m going to do from there is I’m going
to take my first piece and all of these I’m setting so that my stitches are showing or
my folded portion of the Kraft Tex is showing. And I’m going to start in right at a half
inch mark and I’m going to slide this down just slightly to cover my pencil mark. The
pencil mark is just to help me stay straight. And I’m going to walk over to my sewing
machine in here. You can backstitch if you would like but we are also going to fold an
edge on top of this right here. But let’s backstitch anyways. Well that’s silly, I’m
doing a triple stitch so backstitches with every stitch. And here we go.
Ok, so I’m getting near the end here. And again, no real need to backstitch because
it’s doing the triple stitch for you. Get my needle up and out of the way. Slide over
here and a little bit of trimming to do. I’ll catch all of other side later. Now here’s
what I mean by this is going to be your own custom set up. So how do you figure out what
goes where? Just like this. I literally took my tupperware container of my coffee in here
and I set it in. And I’m just kind of folding it up and over and coming right back down.
I would say make sure it slides out with a little bit of ease. So I’m going to give
myself just a little bit of distance. And when I say distance I’m not going to stitch
right up there. I’m going to stitch over about a half of an inch. So the other trick
I’ve learned is I just take my pencil and I’m going to make a mark there and a mark
here. And that’s kind of my stitch line. Eyeball. I’m going to slide that coffee
container out and then I’m going to squish this down and out of the way. Ok, my marks
are still lined up. Back to the machine I go. Ok? Get those edges stitched down nice.
Now the only disadvantage to the triple stitch is if you’re already over-caffeinated is
it take three times as long and it wears and tears on my Oh my gosh, what am I going to
do with myself for the next 15 seconds. We’re just going to stitch through here. And the
other thing is with each pocket like I made the big one kind of a his and hers. My wife
would rather have a cup of tea in the afternoon so I will actually, I have a place for cream
and sugar and tea and all kinds of things in hers. I’m having lots of fun with this.
So again this is just going to stand back up. And then I have kind of have created a
couple different creases just by going back and forth and folding that. I found that all
that work is best one pocket at a time. And now my tupperware is going to slide right
in there. That works perfect. So the next thing is let’s see how grandpa’s coffee
heater is going to fit in here. And I’m just going to roll it on over. Now this is
where that pencil mark becomes so handy because with that pencil mark there I can really line
things up again. And this one I want to be able to pull in and out also but not super
snug. So again, I’m making my pencil mark, making that pencil mark. Slide that out. Slide
the tupperware out. One time I got over to the sewing machine, I had all the stuff still
in the kit. Back to the machine we go. And like if things moved around just like they
just did for me. On those two little pencil marks make life so easy. Ok.
So now if you have like a spoon or something you want to put in there you could. But the
other thing you could let’s say you just wanted to fill in the gap. I’m going to
give myself, I don’t know, let’s call it about a total inch worth of elevation so
about an inch in that space. I’m going to come over here and I’m going to find that
half inch mark I have and I’m just going to kind of set it on there. Mark those. Mark
that. Ok? Now what I can do to make things a little bit easier on myself after I cut
my thread there, is I can lay that on the table. And I know that that mark is going
to have about a half inch seam allowance there. Cut that off. Also cuts very easily. But that
gets that bulk out from the side a little bit. Now I’m back into the machine. Ok?
So again, this is the five inch. That’s the bottom. So what I want to do for this
is kind of another fun little like pinch pleat where I’m kind of folding it in both directions
there a little bit. Let’s try another one over here. And what I really like about working
with this Kraft Tex fiber is I can really manipulate it. You may or may not be able
to see but there’s some creases that I’ve created that allow me to kind of see what
it is I’m doing. And I’m just going to massage this a little bit like yay. So what
have I really done? Kind of an accordion fold in and out of that little section there. And
now I’m just going to sew this bottom closed and this would be a great little pocket where
you’d put your little travel creamer or your travel sugars. This would also, of course,
make a fantastic sewing kit or like maybe something for the charging of all your media
devices, all your cords and cables. Of course I travel with so much electronics anymore,
I have to have a suitcase just for all my cords and chargers. Ok, almost to the end
now. And here we’ve got it. Needle up.
Now I’m going to start setting the side seam allowances first and then I’ll do the
bottom and then I’ll finish with the top. So let’s clear a little space. For the side
seam allowance, again, I’m just going to take and I’m going to fold this over like
this. I am eyeballing it. You could certainly use a ruler if you were more accurate than
I am. And watch this trick. Here I am with my rotary cutter. Of course the blade is definitely
covered and closed. And I’m just creasing this as it goes. Just like that. Let’s do the other side
now and I’ll just sew both of them at the same time. And so you can see that is going
to cover up the pocket we’ve created or the edge of the pocket we’ve created. And
so that add some reinforcement there.
The bottom is all done now as well. And then for the top, what I basically found, let me
show you again, I created an elastic loop to be my closure. So that when I’m all done
basically I fold my bottom up, wrap this around, make one loop this way and a twist. Back to
my old ponytail days, right? I know how to handle those elastic rubber bands. So that
goes around just like that. For my elastic. Standardized elastic cording. This is not
elastic thread. It’s an actual cording. It comes in a couple different sizes. I want
to say this is a half a millimeter. But I really don’t know. For my sizing I’m going
to roll that bottom right up. I’m going to roll my top around like yay. And I’m
just going to take this to figure out how big I’m going to make it. Once, twice around
like that. I’m going to cut it there. Set the other side aside. Now I’m going to take
this and in order to make my elastic just the right amount of stretch is I’m going
to cheat, ok? I guess I could have cut it about an inch shorter, that would have been
an easy way too. Take it both tails, spin yourself a little loop like that. That’s
an old climbing knot, a double eight for you there. Now, trim those tails off. You could
leave that knot exposed because it would look cool I think. Or even better, that knot can
be stitched up into our upper seam and that’s going to hold it. So what we can do is figure
out, let’s see if I’m going from my ten inch mark down there so right about here is
my center point. And I’m actually going to stitch this, let me see if I remember how
I did it, yep. It doesn’t matter which way you change it. So I’m going to stitch it
with my loop pointing out of my kit. So first thing if we come with the elastic in place
so we’re not monkeying with it the whole time. Make sure it’s still centered. And
now I’ve got that knot kind up under the presser foot so I’m going to be really careful
not to go too wild with my machine. And I’m going to run a series of backstitches also.
Even though it’s still set up for my triple stitch. And I’m going to do it one more
time just to really secure this. And again the backstitch to secure. Needle’s up. Ok?
So when this comes out, let’s trim this, these are going to be hard to get to later
so we’re going to take the time to trim them all nice now. Trim, trim. And our last
seam allowance we need to make is just going to fold this over like this. At this point
I’m going to fold my loop down so I’m not worrying about it when I’m near the
presser foot of the sewing machine. And I’m going to go ahead. Slide this under. Triple
stitch
Ok so as I just finished this top seam there’s a couple of things I want to point out as
sewing tricks or techniques. Whenever you’re coming over something really thick like this
that has already been secured, what you can also do is sew up to where that knot was in
this project. And then I simply backstitch. I jump over it with the presser foot, backstitch
again and finish out the sewing. That’s one way to do it if you’re not sure how
your machine is going to handle that thickness. And then the other thing that can happen,
sometimes when we have a thick layer like that, some of us will see that when we’re
hemming our jeans or something, we have this tendency to kind of push through that thick
layer. And a lot of times it’s that pushing motion while the machine is stitching that
can cause you to break needles. Again a broken needle is no big deal but it can be a hazard
to your fingers and/or your eyes. So just avoid the temptation to push those thick seams
through the machine. Try to let your machine do all of the work, right? And you’ll learn
with your machines what they’re capable of and what they’re not capable of. Real
easy that way. Our coffee kit is all ready to rock and roll. Get packed up here. I’m
going to take my tupperware and slide it in. Of course grandfather’s old cup heater.
It fits perfectly there. And then my other pocket I created on the fly I could save some
Kraft Tex or something in there of course, right? Now the nice thing about this, and
this is why I like the elastic closure is it’s flexible with how long our tools that
fit into our coffee kit will be. But I’m just going to bring that bottom up that keeps
things from sliding out. Fold it up this way. I have my loop out of the bag right now. Fold
it up here. I”m going to take this a split it so I only have one of the loops going around
like that. Then I’m twisting it, let’s hold that again and get the second loop to
go around. And just like that, I have a killer coffee kit ready to travel. Jump on an airplane
and meet you at our next location where it looks like I’ll be buying the coffee here
at Man Sewing.