The Rack 2: Mismatched Flowers

One thing that I'd always wondered about is why suspenders - which have two straps - usually have two matching straps. It seems like you could double your suspenders styles simply by having two different patterns or colours on your suspenders - one on each strap. And now that I was making my own, I figured I could finally give that a try. So, when I came across, while digging in a must-proof bin from a friend's basement, two pieces of fabric that had similar patterns and yet were somehow different colours, I realized that I had a unique opportunity on my hands. I could make matching straps that weren't the same colour, thus appealing to everybody. EVERYBODY!

So I came up with this:

Mismatched flowers - September, 2009

Yellow and Black! . . . which I just realized are my high school colours. Go FHS! Yay!

Anyway, it's hard to tell in this picture, but those tiny dots all over the straps aren't polka-dots, but they're little flowers. They aren't the same kind of flower, but that is the least of the problems for this pair of fine-looking suspenders. In case you don't believe me about the flowers though, here's a close up:

flowers . . . up close!

Hmm, I see now that there are also hearts on the black strap. But they're yellow, so I guess the straps actually do match after all.

Anyway, these were only my second pair of suspenders ever, so I was still experimenting with lots of different things. Actually, I suppose I still experiment a fair amount (just the other day, in fact, I found another technique for inserting interfacing into straps), but in those days, everything I did was an experiment, and these suspenders epitomize that.

For instance, if you were to pick up these suspenders, you would immediately feel that there was something odd about them. If you'd just been holding the Original Burgundy the first thing you would notice is that these straps were not thin and limp, but had some unusual substance to them. And that was a main source of experimentation for these suspenders: I wanted to create some more substantial, stiffer straps, since the Original Burgundy's always felt quite feeble. And to maximize my experimentation, I went about this in two ways, so that brings us to the other thing you'd notice about these straps: they feel very different, not just from the Burgundies, but from each other! To be more clear, take a look at them from the side here:

Profile Asymmetry

Isn't that wild! The yellow strap is much thinner than the black strap. And yet, it actually is the toughest, least flexible strap I have ever made. I was inspired to give it a tough-but-thin insert because some high-quality commercial braces someone gave me felt tough-but-thin(-and-fine), and I wanted to recreate that. Wait - that can't be right. I wasn't given those until November, and I thought I made these in September. Well, it was almost two years ago. Until we get to the more recent suspenders, the chronology will certainly be a little out of whack. Let's just say that I was still in the very early stages of development; certainly I was not selling any by this point.

SO, I (clearly) tried two techniques to toughening up the straps. For the black strap, I used some medium iron-on interfacing and simply sewed it up so that on inside of the strap, there are two little end-wings of fabric running to each edge. (In a later post, I'll explain my mechanism for making straps in more detail, thus making this regrettably haphazard explanation more clear.) For the yellow strap, I thought that maybe the way to get that ideal thin/fine-ness while maintaining a certain rigidity was to insert some plastic webbing into the strap of the sort that is usually only found in shirt cuffs, for instance. And actually, I don't think I've even had any sleeves with cuffs this stiff. Nevertheless, these suspenders work; they're strong, but perhaps just a little uncomfortable.  Also, I just remembered that the other reason that I'd wanted to fatten up my straps wasn't just because old Burgundy's were limp, but because my adjusters, at that time, were designed mainly for slightly thicker materials, so I needed to beef things up a little. Yellow still seems to work, but Black was ideal for that. Actually, the technique I used on the black strap is the one I ultimately settled on for most of my casual cotton straps; the technique that I used for the yellow strap, I never did again.

There are actually a few other things to note about these suspenders that I'll quickly run through.

First of all, compare the elastic length of these suspenders to one of my most recently-made pairs:

Mismatched Flowers has a ten-inch elastic. That was my original design because I modeled it after an old favourite whose elastic, unbeknownst to me, had stretched out a bit permanently over the years. I'd been wondering why it was getting a bit uncomfortable when I realized that its elastic was longer than the ones on my other commercial suspenders. So I measured theirs and decided that I would switch to an 8-inch elastic. This didn't happen for a while though, but there's little evidence of it. Like most original Baroque violins, I changed the original design to align with my current taste (which was now for 8-inch straps). Somehow, old Mismatched Flowers seems to have survived the "modernization"! (Only when preparing for this blog post did I realize this, which was a great source of relief. I'd noticed that the adjusters on these suspenders were always up too high at my neck and I'd though that I'd been in error all these years with having 34" straps, so I switched to shorter ones for a while. (apparently, I jump to conclusions) But now I see that 34" is fine, as long as the elastic is 8", and not 10". Of course, for some people, 10" elastic is better, but that's a different story.)

There are lots of other things about these suspenders that make it quite a step beyond the first pair, but I'll cover those in later posts about other suspenders. I'll leave you with one final picture though:

Has this yoke gone bad?

The unique thing about this yoke is that the straps are totally not aligned right. They overlap way above the tip of the yoke. They should overlap only under the leather, not in the air. That's my rule, I guess. And notice how my stitching has changed a lot already. After that failed attempt with a sewing machine on the Original Burgundy, I quickly switched to hand stitching.

These are fun suspenders. I wear them when I'm in the mood for fun. (Maybe I'll "update" the rear elastic now too, so that I can wear them when I'm in the mood for comfort too. . . .)

Moral: Experimentation is funny, and therefore interesting . . . at least, it is to the experimenter, and when it's not something like a life or death situation.