Sticking to it November 22, 2013

This isn’t a lesson so much, more of a “Hey cool!  Look at what I sewed and you could too!”, type tutorial.

Those of you who either have family or are in a line of work that requires name tags may already be acquainted with this type of set up, but this was the first time I had ever seen it done and thought it was just too cool to pass up doing.

My oldest and his friend work together in a camp kitchen and for his friends 18th birthday got him a cooks jacket to match his.  He asked me to make a name tag for him though.  But not just an ordinary name tag.  He wanted one that said his friends last name on one side for when the bosses were there, but on the opposite side had another name entirely.

…. yes, you’re reading the bottom one correctly ….

At first I thought Velcro?  The small dot kind that you would use on purses?  I even bought them.  But the idea of how nifty it would be to have a name tag you could just “slap” on?!  The hunt began….

The normal type of name tag magnet wouldn’t work for this application however.  Because I needed to flip the tag, the polar’s wouldn’t work when we flipped it around.  But I am so keeping these in mind for future use!

So I turned to these little guys – plus, I didn’t have to wait for shipping.

Extra strong “rare earth” magnets.  The small one went into the name tag.  The bigger one, on the back of the shirt.  Mind you, the smaller one is the size of an eraser head and the bigger one is smaller than a dime.  They are pretty heavy, but not so heavy as to shift the shirt, which was another concern with the larger magnet.

After finding the right kind of magnet to do the job, I made the name tag.  Embroidery machines rock!  I made two separate name tags and using clear thread, put them together.  I could have used hot glue, but I thought that might give it too much bulk.  However, if I were to do this over, I would use my embroidery machine for just the words and my serger for the outer lines.  But this still looks pretty good – just hard to match up edges.

Before putting them together, I made little pouches to put the smaller magnets in.  The reasoning behind pouches instead of hot gluing the magnets down was so that when you changed sides of the name tag, the magnets could flip to the correct polar’s.  If I were to glue them down, they would resist each other when turned to the other side and it would be pointless.  (There’s your science lesson for the day.)

Small pouches, one on each side, both holding the smaller magnets sandwiched between name tags.

I hand stitched the inner edges and allowed the clear thread to catch the outer edge so that the pouch would stay put.  Then the two patches were sewn together.

Now to sew in some tiny pouches to the inside of the jacket front.

Also hand-stitched, two pockets, to the inside of the jacket.  Allowing the magnet inside to move freely.  (Yes, I forgot to take a pic of the inside of the jacket.)

One new fancy patch – that will “snap” right on to the shirt.  C’mon – how cool is that!?

I promise I ironed it after this.

Pretty spiffy eh!