Collage, Zigzag, and Details
Collage and zigzag are two unifying themes for our holiday work this year. Here are some works in progress - including a sneak peek at Erika's new Rockabilly Luggage sets.
One month to go to the Chikoko Bizarre Bazaar, and I thought of our fellow vendors working in all of their separate shops across our rainy city yesterday afternoon. We are making some purse/binocular-sized bags. These ones are for Chico Natural Foods, and use some of the mylar maps and Hindu Comic graphics that we used for our 2008 Bizarre Bazaar bags. The theme for the 'Nattie bags is "Wild Chinook Salmon Spawn In Chico's Creeks".
Panel Details
Quinn said "why don't you blog each bag, and give people an option at the end of the entry to click to buy that item?"
I like that idea. Each one of these bags has many stories behind it, and I like the idea of knowing where things that you put your money into come from. I like the idea that anyone slinging one of my bags could tell someone else a story about where their bag came from.
So here is a story about the bag I made today. If you like it, feel free to buy the bag - we'll throw in the story for free.
My buddy Tim is a firefighter in the Bay. He drives down there 2 days a week and works 48 hours straight. He says that if it is a rainy Friday, that they know that they will be out on the freeway. He doesn't like being out on the freeway. Tim hooked me up with the roll of hose, above.
The hose is double jacketed - the outer jacket is a tough, coarse-woven nylon, the inner is coated with rubber, and super tough.
I split the hose, and pull the layers apart, cut it to length, and wash it. Then I sew it onto a coated tarp. The tarp was cut out of a 'wildfire training shelter' - a replica of the tinfoil tents that you are supposed to crawl into if you are a firefighter being overrun by a wildfire. The tinfoil ones are delicate, and you are supposed to practice donning your shelter once a year, so they make 'training shelters' out of tarp. Anyway, the Forest Service invented a new kind of shelter recently, and they are throwing the old ones away, including the practice versions, so I scored this nice tarp...
It is waterproof, bonus!
Rivets
I have been making these for a day trip size, and you can stuff a jacket under the flap if you need to.
ZeekoBag started with a bunch of market and tool bags made from Chicken feed sacks. In 2008 we got into using scraps of graphics printed on mylar in our designs, and did a series of bags using maps and graphics designed by Zeke, and Hindu comics from Erika's childhood.
Zeeko Salvage is a collective. We are a married couple living, scrounging and sewing together. Many of our items are co-created; we like making lots of different things - that's why we have a variety of products to offer.
Zeke Lunder started out making farmer's market bags out of chicken feed sacks in 2004. Erika Dietrich Lunder learned to sew and make clothes from her grandmother, and worked as a clothing designer from 2005 to 2007.
Zeeko Salvage formed when we met and began collaborating on a line of purses and totes from feed sacks and mylar-printed Hindu comics. Lately we have been working with fire hose, firefighting surplus, inner tube, and leather, but we'll work with just about anything that can fit thru an industrial sewing machine.
We are a micro-scale DIY industry. The two of us do the sewing, repair our own machines and make as many tools and parts as we can. We sell online, at Chikoko sponsored events in Chico, California, and at the August 'Prepare for the Playa' Street Fair in San Francisco. Feel free to contact us if you have an idea for a custom bag. {Email Us}
Click here or on the icons below to check out our online shop!
