Help with a repurposing project, please

[Ratatosk]

Hello all,

I’d like to tap the creative wealth here and ask for suggestions for a repurposing project.

I bit HARD on alpaca wool stuff last year, and have basically been disappointed with all of it for various reasons. I ended up with a sort of sleeping bag – literally an alpaca liner inside a tyvek cover for twice the price of those constituent parts – that you’d have to be insane to take down to their advertised 30deg without a whole lot of other insulation, and I couldn’t figure out how to work it into my gear without an enormous weight penalty.  So I took a sick day this week and broke the bag down into its parts. They are:

four coffin-shaped pieces of soft tyvek, guessing 28″ x 68″

two pieces woven wool cloth, also about 28″ x 68″

one piece woven wool cloth, maybe 14″ x 60″

The cloth is thin, very stretchy, and will probably break apart pretty quickly under stress if I don’t sew/reinforce the loose edges I’m working with now. I know I can make a crude poncho or something pretty simple out of the wool, but I’m betting there’s something a whole lot cooler I could get out of these parts. A shell jacket, for example.

Any ideas out there?

 

 

Edit – I was actually sick, I didn’t just bail for a day

[Sam Farrington]

The old saying – when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, stop digging.  But I sympathize.  It is tough to put a lot into a project and have to scrap it.  You’re not alone.  I’ve got boxes full of such projects, so know the feeling.

I bought some Alpaca sox at a local shop – they fell apart.  And I don’t use sheep’s wool, because trekking you’re constantly on the move, and wool takes forever to dry out.

I think somewhere I’ve got an old Holubar sleeping bag kit, but not sure where the down filling is, but know the shell pieces should be around somewhere.  If this would help with making a sleeping bag, or even a quilt, make a note here that you’ve PM’d me and I’ll send what’s there to you.  MYOG can be frustrating for sure.

 

[Ratatosk]

Thank you Sam, that’s very kind.

I haven’t put any effort into this project at all, apart from pick a ton of stitches out, simply because I’ve got no idea what to do with this stuff.  A lot of money in materials  will sit around, unless I find something to do with it, but that’s not the end of the world. With no sewing machine, I think the best course is get a friend of mine to sew this stuff to the underside of an old EE 40deg quilt I’ve got, unless an idea comes up here.

It was an expensive, borderline-psychotic consumerist freakfest, that alpaca, but I’m out and back to my beat up smartwool!

[MJ H]

If the pattern is right, make a poncho, call it a serape, and look like Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns.

[Ratatosk]

^That’s my default option, I think, It’s a glaringly electric blue color, think Hipster Stares at Blank Screen. I may have to make a jedi cloak instead of a serape.

[Matthew / BPL]

^that is the funniest post I have read on BPL in a while

[Author]

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