Scraps of Compassion

Some time ago Charles and I were asked if we could donate some scraps of material to a group called Scraps and Prayers, they are a quilting group from Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Encinitas. We have always stuck those scraps in a tub or in the trash, never thinking that someone could use them to do good for others. Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts believes in contributing to various charities and while we do a lot for others we can’t give every time we are asked so finding a way to get rid of our scraps and possibly do good was very exciting to us. We immediately jumped on board with this as well as asked our cutter to start saving our scraps and before you know it we had a really good size donation to give them. We had no idea how useful those scraps would turn out to be. Plus what could be better than going green for charity.

Several months later we were at our new store in Escondido when 3 of the ladies came to see us. They wanted to show us what they had been able to accomplish with our scraps and to say we were floored wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Those scraps of fabric were being put to great use. One of the things they did was to use the scraps to make quilts for the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton. When a warrior comes there to recover they get a comfortable, colorful quilt to snuggle in and keep. I just know they must appreciate the fact that someone cared enough about them and the sacrifices they make to our country to make a quilt for them. The quilts are 60x80, cheerful and warm and fit their beds. Pictured above is just one of the surfboard quilts that will be given to a soldier.

They also used some of our fine prints to make quilts for those in their congregation who turn 100 years old imagine the glee of someone who reaches 100 years old and to celebrate that with their very own quilt is just wonderful.
 
They make Prayer Quits for members who are gravely ill and the thought that some of those scraps of material would be used to make a quilt that brings comfort to someone very ill gives us a very humbling feeling.
 

The ladies also brought us a hand made quilt which we will always value, but truth be told while we appreciate the gift just knowing what uses they had put those scraps to were enough to absolutely make our day. We believe that the quilt we are holding depicts every design and color we have ever donated to the scraps for prayers project.
 
Now when I mention sending Aloha around the world, they have certainly covered that too. Several quilts were made for the earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile. The thought that somewhere across the world a quilt is covering a child or adult who has lost everything they own and is suffering makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. It just goes to show what a huge difference a little bit of scraps can do when you have a group of good-hearted people doing positive things to help others.

Mahalo to the Bethlehem Lutheran Church Scraps & Prayers Group, we here at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts appreciate what you do for others in a big – big way!

If you have a comment, or your own story about going green for charity that you would like to share, please leave a comment and we will approve it. On-topic links within your comments are acceptable.

Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts

Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts

This is the second post of the series on Hawaiian shirts which is appropriately called Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts. Assuming you got past designing and printing your fabric outlined in phase one and have received your new Hawaiian print fabric, its time to take out the cutting saw and cut it all up. So its off to fabric storage to get a few roles of your favorite design and deliver them to the cutting room.

Now while it all sounds easy so far, you are reaching a critical stage in making Hawaiian shirts. This is where the tires meet the pavement and any mistakes can and will completely ruin your new Hawaiian fabric.

So before you do anything more you need to inspect your Hawaiian shirt pattern. At Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts we use commercial grade patterns graded by a professional pattern maker.

These are not the Hawaiian shirt patterns you see in Wal-Mart. Patterns do degrade so you need to make sure that they do not show any signs of damage, as well as makeing sure no pieces are missing.

Make sure you store your patterns in a dry place because the pattern paper will absorb moisture and shrink significantly.

The next step setting up for the cut. Once you have loaded the roll of fabric on the rollers and you have the table prepped it time to lay down the layers. Depending on quantity needed we cut anywhere from 18 to 100 layers at a time. I want to take a moment to give credit where credit is due, and thats to the cutters who have a thankless job. We all agree that sewing makes or breaks a shirt but its our personal opinion that the Hawaiian shirts develop their distinct personalities on the cutting tables.

At the point of setting the patterns and creating the marker, a good fabric cutter in San Diego will take into consideration how the completed piece will look when sewn together. Where you position the pattern piece is crucial to achieving the desired effect in the finished product.

Ok we now have the fabric setup and the marker is completed and weighted and or clamped, looks like we are ready to rock. Depending on the amount of layers you can either use a rotary saw or my personal favorite, a super sharp 8” knife saw. At this point is the men are separated from the boyz. Start following the lines and cut out every required piece, remember that a single mistake like a deep or off marker cut will make the entire layer unusable, were talking total scrap.

When you have completed your cut you tie the size together and move on to the next cut, and you continue to cut until your back starts to hurt, which usually sets in pretty quickly. That basically sums up cutting, we hope you found it informative enough to make the determination that you don’t want to do it yourself. Our next post in the series will be sewing Hawaiian shirts, the final yet most critical phase in making a Hawaiian shirt.

Mahalo!

Hawaiian Shirts, from Conception to the Consumer

Hawaiian shirts, from conception to the consumer.

Welcome to the first in a series of posts outlining how Hawaiian shirts are made.

While the consumer only sees the completed shirt, there are a lot of processes that must first occur. So lets jump right in with coming up with a design and a brief overview of that process. I am one of those people that map out everything in my head and rarely put anything on paper myself and I place a lot of emphasis on how our customers will perceive the design on the fabric.

Remember that you have maintain your “Aloha identity” while at the same time satisfying your customers needs.

Once I have the overall Hawaiian design in mind, I will contact our Hawaiian design artist and she will start the process of extracting the information. The first renditions for our Hawaiian designs come to us as sketches, once the general concept is nailed down we discuss the repeat and then move on to coloring. Shown on this page is a print that is in its 4th iteration with partial colorizing, but it should be enough to illustrate how its done.

Eventually we make it to the point where we have the design approved and locked and ready to go to the printer. But that’s just one leg of the long journey, while you may have print ready Hawaiian artwork, you are far from having cut ready Hawaiian print fabric. The next step involves what is called strike-offs, whereas the design is sent overseas for screen setup and once those are prepared, the printer will run off about 1 yard of printed fabric, that is what’s referred to as the strike-off. Once that has been ran we will receive digital images for review, if all looks good the strike-off is then sent back to us for approval or rejection.

Due to variations in dye lots you may or may not get the actual colors you originally anticipated, so seeing the physical strike-offs are mandatory. Unfortunately some strike-offs do get rejected and its back to square one. But given the fact that you didn’t print and essentially ruin 3000 yards of Hawaiian fabric, it’s a minor setback.

Ok so now we are 8 to 10 weeks into the process, assuming the colors and repeat are what you were looking for its time to sign off on the strike offs and begin printing. Well you hope they will start right away but that’s not always the case. In many countries you have to deal with things like Chinese New Years whereas the plants shut down for a month and in some instances the local governments will shutdown entire industrial power grids to conserve electricity. Typically the entire process of going from design to printed Hawaiian fabric is about 3 months but you should also be prepared to wait as long as 5 months, and that does not factor in shipping which is usually by sea.

We hope you found this informative and come back to read our next post, where we will be discussing Hawaiian shirt patterns and cutting.

Mahalo,

The crew at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts

Fabrics for Dummies

Well another exciting week has passed and another is about to start. Buying Hawaiian fabrics is a weekly task around here, but just this weekend I concluded that a lot of people couldn’t tell one fabric from another. So that poses an interesting question, just how do you tell what is what?

Our area of expertise is primarily all fabrics Hawaiian, which include cotton, cotton blends, polycotton and rayon fabrics. Cotton is obviously made from Cotton fibers and it’s probably the most popular and comfortable fabric for apparel. Polycotton is pretty popular because of its durability and wide array of designs available on polycotton.

Rayon fabrics are made from natural wood fibers and are probably the most underrated of all the fabrics, I think people confuse them with the polyester shirts back in the days of disco shirts. Shirts made from polyester are not bad, after all they do hold color forever but there is that stigmatism… one that the fabric may never shake off. Remember when bakelite was all the rage?

But if you were holding them in your hand would you really be able to tell what’s what? Believe it or not many of the fabric sellers cant either. So I developed a simple yet reasonably accurate way to tell, you will need a small piece of the fabric and a lighter or similar source of flame.

Take a small piece of fabric in question and light one corner of it, allow it to burn for about a second or two (observe the smoke and color of the flame) and then blow it out. Then take a look at the edge of the fabric where the flame was.

Cotton: Burns without any distortion of fabric, the fire line is very clean and even.

Rayon: Burns much faster and resembles burning paper, the burnt fiber will feel like fine ash.

Polycotton: Somewhat smoky burn, the fabric will curl while burning and the fire line will have a shiny edge to it.

Polyester: Noticeably more smoke than other fabrics and the fire line will look just like melted plastic.