7g Silnylon Slipperiness

Something a bit different for me this time; a post on my first attempt at MYOG or Make Your Own Gear for those not so familiar.

For a while now I've seen John (ShedDweller10 on Twitter) and Nigel (nigep) tweet out about MYOG they're having a go at. References to fabrics and obtaining curious pieces of haberdashery, or what fabric deals they've been able to get. Not to mention of course, Colin (Tramplite) and Mateusz (Laufbursche) with their more professional approach, and particularly Thomas (gauperaa) who has given me much encouragement. In fact now I'm thinking about it, there is a small army of industrious MYOGers populating the UL (Ultralight) and general Lightweight backpacking community so apologies if I should have mentioned you, too.

Maybe feeling a little left out of this, and wanting to experience that other dimension that these folk seem to experience, I ordered some silnylon from Germany with some very mini cord locks (almost the tiniest I've seen) waiting eagerly for it to arrive which it did less than a week later. However, to break myself in gently, I decided to have a bit of a MYOG weekend and kicked off Friday night 'living it large' by making a pooh stick, courtesy of the instructions by Colin and hosted on Andy Howell's blog. I didn't have quite the right ingredients but made a respectable job (I think) and the enhanced stick weighed in at 26g.

Back to the parcel from Germany! I decided to start simple and to sew a stuff sack first. I have visions of starting to replace my mass manufactured clothing with home made, sorry, custom made clothing, bespoke even, for me. But back to reality and a stuff sack.

I didn't really follow any instructions as such, having read so much on thru-hiker.com and on friends sites and BPL. In the end I took a couple of stuff sacks I already have, turned them inside out and looked at how the seams were constructed and then winged it as far as cutting out my fabric to a rough size. The pedant in me went back over it to make sure my cut lines followed the lines of the ripstop.

So with a rectangle of slippery silnylon cut out, I spent approximately the next half an hour trying to figure out what I needed to do in what order (hey, it was my first go at this remember!). Then setting up the sewing machine so that the tension on the top and bottom row of stitches was even. Remembering to wind the bobbin with thread of the same colour and then checking the tension on a piece of scrap again (not that I'd actually produced much in the way of scrap at that point anyway!).

I took the plunge and sewed the first seam, joining the short sides together to form the tube. I folded it over to create an edgeless seam (I am no seamstress and as yet don't really know the name of seams) and was reasonably pleased with how it looked.

So, a tube. What next? I decided to sew the top hem, and to help me I pinned the hem down, not being worried about waterproofness (it wasn't going to be a roll top closure but just a draw cord). The pic below shows the hem folded over and pinned in place.

For some reason I decided to switch to the bottom of the bag (cul de sac) at this point and sewed up the bottom hem then doubled it over and sewed again (belts and braces approach?).

Then I opened up the bottom as shown below so I could pin roughly where I wanted to sew to create the rectangular form of the bottom..

 I sewed along the pinned line and then doubled the triangular corner over and sewed over this, again with the idea that it might give the bag strength. Whether this is true or not I have no idea!

I repeated this on the other side and cut off the excess material.

Turning this the right side out I had a nice looking seam:

That left the top to do. I wanted to put an eyelet in, rather than create a buttonhole entry for the drawcord, or to mess around with the hem opening at the seam. Somewhat surprisingly my parents had a couple of eyelet punches and I finished the bag off on Sunday night (yes, there was a fair bit of elapsed time doing other stuff!) but after a couple of bevvies I put the eyelet on the wrong way around!
No matter, once the eyelet was in I threaded the drawcord through and into place around the pinned hem (remember that almost at the start?). Then I hemmed the flap of material down, capturing the drawcord in place, going carefully over the eyelet area which is a bit bulky for the sewing machine to negotiate.
Here's the finished product:

I feel reasonably pleased with the end result. It is just the right size for my sidewinder, is reasonably light at a whole 7g, is a nice, bright red colour (a lot of my other kit is green or black so it doubles in use as something to stand out a little if I needed to draw attention) and overall, I made it and I'm proud!

I used:
1.5mm Polyester cord
Ripstop Nylon tent fabric silicon coated 50g/sqm 2nd choice in red
Mini Tanka cord lock
Red polyester thread

The fabric, cord lock and drawcord were all from extremtextil and I found the ordering process really easy. They accept Paypal and you can pick from a choice of shipping options. My small parcel arrived within about 5 days of ordering which I was really pleased at.

Sites you may want to look at include:
thru-hiker
backpackinglight
And there are lots of clips on YouTube too.

If you have access to a sewing machine, have a go! ShedDweller John just got hold of a sewing machine on Freecycle so don't let lack of machine put you off; have a go! It's so much nicer to think 'I made this' rather than to go out (or sit in on your computer) and "buy, buy, buy"!