I rescued and repaired this Singer 66. If anybody is looking to pick up sewing, especially jeans, this is the machine to do it with. It's a real tank and runs beautifully. $75, free drop off in/near/between Cleveland and Syracuse, I can ship without the cabinet anywhere else. paleo.denim@gmail.com
Here are some pictures from the sewing studio I had set up in The Gear Factory in Syracuse. I didn't keep the space, but it was a good experiment for scaling up production in the near future.
Future plans for The Gear Factory.
The freight elevator, which I sorely miss.
The box in the center (my cutting, ironing and serging station) and the boxes in the upper right with all my tools are actually anti-aircraft munitions boxes. I don't know how they've lasted so long or how many there are in the warehouse, but it makes the place very modular.
If you're interested in more information about The Gear Factory, check out the groupsite.
I started making jeans in December 2007, on winter break from school. I'd been boring my friends and classmates all semester with half baked ideas about how I was going to start making my own clothes, and now it was time to make good. Unfortunately a perfectly good pair of thrifted jeans was sacrificed to make the pattern, but them's the breaks.
I wasn't proud of them at first. The sewing process was a brutal five day fight and extremely humbling. I wasn't able to finish them for want of a button, so they sat in my closet until the summer.
When summer came I did start using them as work jeans for at my construction job. The job also let me upgrade equipment, get a few new machines and keep making new jeans. By the end of the summer I picked up a better machine and started sourcing better denim.
A Singer 31-36k from the 1940's.
The project was put on hold while I was abroad for fall 2008, but I wore these jeans long and hard and they're precious to me now. 7 months and 6 new passport stamps later they have many many memories etched into the indigo.
Beyond jeans my interests are politics, books, documentaries and motorcycles. In the near future I hope to be spending a year with AmeriCorp doing service work. If you have any questions or want a pair a jeans, shoot me an email- paleo.denim@gmail.com