Ask Waylon Lew anything about stitching and modding.

[Wasabi]

A lot of people were recommending me to do this at the recent NYFA tournament this past weekend, so I think I'll do just that. I would like to ask any moderator/administrator to refrain from merging this topic to the current sticky topic above on instructing people on how to stitch/fill footbags, as I will be trying to do this in an organized fashion for curious newcomers to footbag stitching. I am also trying to help people if they have concerns about shoe-modding, so I will do my best to contribute in that regard. Of course, the best and perfect resource is to look into the current sticky topic(s) right above for all questions involving these matters, but I want to try to give everyone a hands-on approach in helping people to sew and mod better, and to give them a better introspect on what they are doing.

The purposes of this topic is to help people about footbag stitching and shoe modding. This can involve anything within the realms of the 32-panel and lower (such as 4, 6, 8, 12 and 14-panels), and for shoe modding I have experience within the mesh & leather Rod Laver, the G-unit, and some experience with the Climacool (I have never really modded a Climacool 1 shoe before, but I have seen plenty of Climacools at tournaments to assess on what needs to be done to make them shreddable). Mods include material removal (toe/inside/outside mesh/cotton-under/leather surfaces), tongue, toe-walls, Brocka mod, insole and whatever. Just be specific in your question.

However, I do have one condition when it comes to people asking me questions: If I have already answered a question, and the same or a similar question pops up, I will either not answer it or I will re-link the post in which I have answered said question and elaborate more on the subjectivity of it. The former, the condition in which I will not answer is likely, since people have a tendency to repeat themselves, but if anyone is confused on what I'm trying to explain, I will try to offer my explanations in layman's terms to help you understand better.

All information will stay in this topic and this topic alone, so I won't be linking everyone's responses from other topics to explain myself better, as that tends to be confusing and nobody learns from that. I will try to use pictures in some responses to help everyone understand what to do in terms of sewing and modding. Especially in terms of footbag sewing, I will try to use pen & paper diagrams to help inform people on their queries for sewing consistency and organization.

Alright! Ask away!

[Jordan]

my last 2 footbags have came out a little small, about the size of an abshire (not that I dont Like abshires, I love them!!!) I would just like a bigger bag... The current panel template im using for the generator is .65 for both and 40% for hex short side... I think im stitching too far down the panel, like im stitching deep... Also, my bleedholes are coming out a bit small... How should I change these problems?

By the way, my bags are really shredable and I personaly love them, I would just like them to be easier to re-fill (bleedhole problem), and be a little bigger than a mini size

if you can help, thanx

[ObArA'BaRs]

come on Waylon, I sense the Lew presence is near

[shredzilla]

How do you motivate yourself to stitch, and do you do anything to help the time go by more quickly while stitching? I would love to stitch more than the once every two months or whatever, but it's so painful to start a new bag it seems like. I can't imagine doing it to fill orders. I DID used to do just that, but I never had near as many as you have all the time. Props on keeping up with it.

[Wasabi]

Just so you know, last evening was a pretty emotional time for me (to the point where I didn't know what day of the week it was), and I just didn't want to answer questions. Sometimes I keep forgetting that modified is part of the interweb, and you can easily disguise yourself in a different monikor, or superimpose a fake identity just to fuel drama and hatred like it were a play thing. I suppose I have a deep passion for footbag, and to see matters go down in an irresponsible manner like that just doesn't sync well with me.

Alright! Onto answering questions!

my last 2 footbags have came out a little small, about the size of an abshire (not that I dont Like abshires, I love them!!!) I would just like a bigger bag... The current panel template im using for the generator is .65 for both and 40% for hex short side... I think im stitching too far down the panel, like im stitching deep... Also, my bleedholes are coming out a bit small... How should I change these problems?

Jordan, what you listed to me leaves me slightly confused, but that's how templates are and how you are stitching much too deep into the panels themselves is a factor for making small 32s in general. Also, a 40% short hex side is a pretty hefty percentage, but I think I can help you out with your template, sewing breadth and consistency.

Here is a pretty decent template size that I just thought of from out of my head, since in my humble opinion 6.5 inches for both the pentagon and hexagon are way too small for you to be working with:

Pentagon Length: .72 inches
Hexagon Long Side Length: .76 inches
Hexagon Short Side Length: 26%

That should give you a pretty normal and sizeable 32-panel, around the size of a golfball.

Now, to answer your sewing depth situation. The best in my opinion is to sew 1 milimeter away from the edge, 1.5mm would be decent, but 2mm would be too much. The reason I say this is because the further you sew away from the edge, the stiffer your bag will feel through break-in, and overall your bag will just feel much more condensed with bunched fabric underneath the surface. Unless you have Tungsten to balance this, which in a lot of ways is unnecessary for a couple of reasons, it is better to help you hone your craft than adapting it to better circumstances. Once you figure out your sewing depth and honing it to make it slightly closer to the edge, your bleedholes will follow the same route.

However, that is to say if you have follow this sort of consistency {- - - -} (long hex side). If you use {/ - - \}, where the first and last stitches that form the bleedhole are angled to compensate larger short side hex lengths, you will have a couple of complications. One is that it will be difficult for you to make your bleedholes adjacent and clean, especially if you are starting out, and second is that it will be difficult for you to assess the proper size of bleedhole you should be making of equivalent size throughout the entire 32-panel. I always stress that you should master a great and consistent running stitch, like so {- - - -} on the long hex side, and compliment that with one that is exactly consistent as on the pentagon side {_-_-_-_}. Notice how I used an underscore to replace the seams that would otherwise be on the long hex side, thus concluding that you should be aware of the how your running stitch is formulated on the pentagon side so that you can leave the corners on the pentagon free from stress and tension once you gather.

Jordan, I hope this helps. Good luck in stitching, and feel free to PM me of any more concerns you have so that I may be able to assist you more.

edit2: Grammatical help by Moxie. Thanks Emily!

[BenRea]

When you're cutting the fabric do you just individually cut the panels out or do you use a faster technique like folding the fabric?

[Wasabi]

How do you motivate yourself to stitch, and do you do anything to help the time go by more quickly while stitching? I would love to stitch more than the once every two months or whatever, but it's so painful to start a new bag it seems like. I can't imagine doing it to fill orders. I DID used to do just that, but I never had near as many as you have all the time. Props on keeping up with it.

How do you motivate yourself to stitch, and do you do anything to help the time go by more quickly while stitching?

Honestly, I find the act in sewing footbags very boring and wasteful of my time, but I am trying to find motivation and have lately found much more motivation due to the NYFA tournament this past weekend. It wasn't the tournament experience itself that got me going, but the amount of requests from players asking if I had bags for sale. I kept on wondering why people wanted my bags, and the simple answer is that my bags play well and plenty of players believe and back those claims wholeheartedly. I also see colors all around me everywhere. Like, I can see colors on a patterned bag that a woman is carrying on the street, or the dirty floor on the Subway train, and I have a compulsory habit to jot the colors down into "facile color" formats and work with those. Colors for 32s can be broken down to simply 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 17, 21 and 32 (or whatever, in terms of random colors and dada bags) depending on the pattern, and the knowledge I've gained through stitching keeps me wanting to make those colors and patterns a reality.

There was a funny time where Jon Schneider came over to Central Park here in NYC for a casual kick with NYFA, and how he commented on a large plastic bag filled with bags of aluminum cans, and how that looked like a 32-panel. I'm sure he was jokingly inspired on wanting to kick a bag like that, but as a stitcher I saw that as something iridescent and beautiful. Once you find the inspiration or muse in real life that transcends into the colors you want to make into a 32, you get the impulse on wanting to make it than selfishly keep it in your head lazily without a clue.

On what I do to keep me entertained and to make the time go by quickly through stitching: time is a factor, but it involves a lot of things. Excitement is a prime aspect in sewing, because if you're excited to make a pattern or color combo on a 32, it is obvious that you're going to push yourself to sew more quickly and carefully to make it happen. I've done a lot of this with the plethora of rainbow 32s I've made and the recent "Phoenix Suns" bag I made for Ken Somolinos. Once you have the drive to make your product exist out of your imagination, it will be enough motivation for you make that bag faster. And then there is always Youtube, television or music on your CD/MP3 player to help entertain your other senses while sewing.

... but it's so painful to start a new bag it seems like. I can't imagine doing it to fill orders.

Honestly, I don't like filling orders. I wish I can just make bags that go out as first-come-first-serve, but the fact of the matter is is that I like doing custom orders, and like to surprise people with patterns they have not seen before. Most players that request a bag from me would just ask me to sew whatever that comes to mind, and I used to do just that. Then people ask specific patterns over and over again, and I just don't like repeating the same pattern with the same colors over and over again. It destroys the originality and creativity of my stitching craft, which I used to love. However, now I'm trying to get back into my stitching groove, and I still want to surprise modified, and the players themselves, with my bags.

For me, what gets me started is making that one anchor stitch to start the pentagon "flower" or the first pentagon on a 32. Then everything goes along from there. Obviously we have different types of sewing methods, Chris, but in my most professional opinion it is the menatlity and motivation that is the drive of the stitcher, not the act of stitching in of itself.

[Wasabi]

When you're cutting the fabric do you just individually cut the panels out or do you use a faster technique like folding the fabric?

I individually cut panels one by one by tracing, than using the faster technique where you fold the fabric into strips and cut them out with the assistance of pressure or magnets, and a very sharp pair of scissors. I'm a stickler when it comes to conserving facile, so I would rather use a much slower method in cutting panels out than waste facile with a faster method.

However, if you like to sew bags more efficiently and faster without fussing over cutting all of your panels, the faster technique is the best way to do that. You can also make some pretty cool looking dada bags out of the extra panels you make. I'm stoic, traditional and conservative when it comes to facile, so it works out for me in a way.

I think the easy bonus with the faster technique is that you can opt for making pretty even spikes for a spikey 32, which in my case is somewhat difficult because I have to randomly cut out spikes to make them. I do have a ziploc bag where I keep all of my disposed and unusable facile scraps so that I may make a pillow with it, but sometimes I scrounge through it to find proper colors to make spikes out of them. Again, it's just me being a stickler for conserving facile.

[Jordan]

thanx waylon

and by the way, I got my Units today, and I used your tutorial, and it helped a lot.

By the way, I like Units a lot more than lavers.

[Wasabi]

By the way, I like Units a lot more than lavers.

A lot of people think so. I just wish I can find an all black model in my size feet. I found a couple of opportunities, but I never really acted on them in the past- and I sort of regret them to this day. However, I will be getting black Quantum 03s sometime soon and will get into them once I kill my current pair of Qm02s.

[BenRea]

have you ever considered/tried putting little dots on each panel to perfectly space the stitching? or are you just good at judging the spacing and length of the stitches?

[Wasabi]

have you ever considered/tried putting little dots on each panel to perfectly space the stitching? or are you just good at judging the spacing and length of the stitches?

Never. And yes, I'm just that good at judging.

Just kidding, but I personally think it's unnecessary to do something like that. Part of the experience of sewing bags is to learn how to space your stitches, not only in between each of them, but the corresponding spaces outside of the running stitch path. The corners of pentagons and the adjacent spacing of the stitches that form the bleedhole on hexagons come to mind. Thopse are the areas in which you would actually be judging on the exterior of the 32, whether it be the sharpness of the pentagon, or how clean the bleedholes look. All you really are doing on each side with the running stitch is to make the sewing path look straight and proper on the exterior, while keeping in mind to allow the 32 even tension all around the panels for clean aesthetics.

Also, if you think about it, a lot of effort would be wasted just to mark your holes on each panel, and pen ink has the very tendency to rub off and stain the panel through handling and sewing.

To be honest, I learned how to sew bags from Pengpeng Du and a few words of sagely advice from Tom Mosher, when they still had their Kingston Footbag website up and going. It just involved a few pictures and words of text, but those in of themselves helped a lot. I'm sure if you find a website about sewing a 32-panel, or if you can find it, the video on footbag[dot]org of Dat Phan sewing a 32-panel, that would help IMMENSELY. However, in all honesty, a picture of a pentagon with all sides sewn with a proper running stitch path, or a hexagon with one side of the long hex side sewn onto a pentagon, is extremely helpful already.

Most importantly, having a trained eye is a mark of an experienced stitcher. I think it took me about 25 bags to train my eye to consider these concepts, and I guess just one bag per hiatus if I ever take a break from stitching. However, I have been amazed by people making 10 bags and understanding the necessary depth and breadthity of sewing, and sewing consistently with their running stitch. So, really, sewing footbags is really easy once you take the time to understand it, it just takes time and proper discipline.

[LEGOMAN]

you can also ask me about modding shoes. i modded jim penskes mesh gunits for him. i feel like i can help with every shoe out there so far.

[gangsta]

Wow, my first name, and your last name, as well as mr. Monhollons 1st name are quite similar!

Your bags look badass! What's your secret? How deep do you stitch, and how many bags have you sewn?

[Wasabi]

Yes, if anyone needs extensive help in modding shoes, I wouldn't be the person to ask since I only have experience in modding shoes that are like the Rod Laver model. If anything, you can PM Kyle or any experienced player on modified for more detail on what to do.

Wow, my first name, and your last name, as well as mr. Monhollons 1st name are quite similar!

I am so glad I saved this: Here is a small piece of paper that I got from Lon Smith when I bought a pair of green Twill Lavers from him a couple of years back...



I think if we all met in person, we would be very much alike as well.

Your bags look badass! What's your secret? How deep do you stitch, and how many bags have you sewn?

I don't have a secret, to be honest, but I guess I have a unique sewing method. It helps me formulate and even out my gather, since I gather each side individually and not at one go once I complete the pentagon. I just loop around the first and last holes of pentagon stitches, which then become a part of the "inner-facing" holes of the first and last hexagon stitches, and that helps me to even out gather in a way. Especially when the bag breaks-in, the abuse the bag takes gives the panels some extra room to expand comfortably, since you are also applying more thread and stitches with this type of sewing technique. It takes a lot more effort and work, and extensive eye-needle coordination, but I think it helps. I learned this method from Tom Mosher and Matt Cross, at KICKASS 2 in October 2006 I think, but they sew their bags much much differently these days.

I remember it took me a good while to understand it, like 5 or 6 bags, but I found my groove. As a fair warning, though, unless you have experience in gathering each side evenly while sewing through a pentagon, it will be hard to understand how to make the gather on each side extremely even. Just do what works for you and stick with it. I still think the standard sewing method is bomb-diggity, and I love playing with bags that have a high amount of gather (and strong colors) on them. Like, bags made by Eskimo Joe and shortis, and Matt Cross when he still sewed 3-stitch bags back then, are among my favorite bags to kick with these days and I assume they all use the sewing methods that are nothing fancy. I'm just an exception. (By the way, MC bags used with the 2-stitch method these days are freakin' awesome. Buy an MC bag today! /shameless plug)

Oh, and to answer your other questions: 1 mm away from the edge, and I lost count. Maybe more than 80.

[HippieTom]

any tips on spiky bags? im kinda confused as to where to sew the spikes, like between the filler gaps? or between the pents and the hexes?
Thanks

[Wasabi]

any tips on spiky bags? im kinda confused as to where to sew the spikes, like between the filler gaps? or between the pents and the hexes?

Spiky bags are usually made with the spikes sewn in between the filler gaps / bleedholes. So, when you're about to stab your needle to connect one hexagon to another, you just add your spike in between and sew through. It is slightly difficult, as you will be working with three layers of fabric, but it is doable.

Here are a couple of pictures for reference:




I have seen bags with the spikes all around the pentagon sides, especially in 12-panels (Ben Rea and Danny Botkin bags are great examples), but I've never made a spiky bag in that fashion before. I assume you just have to make a "spike" template, or a symmetrically long acute triangle template, and have the short side equate to the length of your pentagon sides. Just remember that in this case, again, you will be working with three layers of fabric, but probably with a higher level of difficulty since you will be working with trying to organize a proper running stitch path with three layers and incorporating a decent amount of gather for each side.

The amount of spikes necessary for filler gaps / bleedholes are 30 spikes.
The amount necessary for each pentagon, all around, is 60, because 12*5=60.

Now that I think about it... I might try a 90-spike 32-panel. It would probably be the best 4-square bag ever.

[gangsta]

I am so glad I saved this: Here is a small piece of paper that I got from Lon Smith when I bought a pair of green Twill Lavers from him a couple of years back...

Weird! Not only do I wear green twill lavers, but my bday is 11-30..

[HippieTom]

Thanks Waylon! im gonna start one tonight! ill be sure to post a pic in the Bags I've (any stitcher here) Made thread
and once again thank you, i must say this is a wonderful thing you are doing by being open for questions from newbs like me without getting annoyed

[Hobit]

This is a cool thread your offering Waylon . Realy nice of you .
I hope all is well with you after your emotional evening the other day .

Have you ever created a new patern to experiment with ?

You trace the panels that are going to get cut out . Whats your template ?

1mm is about an 1/8th inch ruffly correct ?

Is prewashing ultrasuede needed ?

How long should a bag take to complete ? Im averaging around six hours .

Just for fun id like to see you come up with a color patern for a Hot Fudge Sundae bag with a cherry on top . Heres an inspirational image below :



Thanks . Take care .