Week 6 - Dying Bill's Blue
In the final video from Batch No.14's making process, you can watch our most popular colour, Bill's Blue being garment dyed. Next week, packing begins! We can't wait to get your jacket to you and hear what you think. In the meantime, grab a cuppa and enjoy!
Week 5 - Dying Bottle Green
Dye houses don't normally like to invite film makers into their labs, but we've taken this film to show you our process of dying from start to finish on jackets from Batch No.14. Enjoy!
Week 4 - Sewing part 2
Watch this week's update to see your jacket seriously taking shape.
We've come a long way since cutting and your jacket is starting to resemble what you ordered last month...!
Also, this week we received a new machine in the factory called the Ascolite Button Securing System! It's a final process to add an extra tight and secure wrapper around the button threads, meaning they should be more secure and stay on for a long long time rather than becoming loose. Here's a video Mario sent us via Whatsapp showing a few tests on the new machine. (Btw, the thread colours will be matched to the jacket colour, but for testing purposes, they're white in this video).
Week 4 - Sewing & label making
The buzz of machinists making is in full flow as your pockets are being pressed, overlocked and attached to the left and right body panels. Your labels are being sewn into the back neck and collars and cuffs are being pressed, ready for assembly.
You'll notice at this stage that every piece is white. Regardless of the colour you chose, we are cutting and sewing your jacket in a raw, un-dyed cloth called 'PFD' that stands for 'prepared for dye', using cotton thread and dye resistant labels. Only once it's fully sewn is your jacket garment dyed, which gives a beautiful soft colour coverage, and enables our very low waste method of making, since there's no guessing which colours will be most popular ahead of time and then having leftover fabric, instead we make the colours that you choose.
P.S. Here are your labels being woven!
Week 3 - Your buttons being made
We started making the Corozo nut buttons for your jacket over 15 years ago. Well, that’s when the Tagua Palm tree was planted, and only after 15 years do they start to produce Corozo nuts.
The female trees produce mocochas (big spikey husks) which drop naturally from the tree like a coconut. The husks contain enough valuable Corozo nuts, to make thousands of buttons.
Once collected the nuts are laid out to dry in the sun, before processing into button blanks. Blanks are quite literally blank disks of white nut, from which many styles and sizes of button can be cut. Every nut is cut into slices. The smaller slices destined to become tiny buttons used on shirts, and the biggest and most valuable blanks will become large coat buttons.
Next, the blanks are sent to Andrea & David, Lise & Steve at Courtney & Co in the UK, ready to be made into your buttons. The first stage is taking the blank and ‘turning’ it, which means using machinery to carve the top & bottom sides of the button into the right style & size.
With the buttons carved and ready, there’s just three final stages of the process: polishing, dying and drying.
Week 2 - Your canvas being cut
Shortly after you placed the order for your jacket, we let Mario know how many of each fit, colour and size we wanted to order, and he got to work playing tetris - working out how to lay out every pattern piece to make the best use of our canvas, with minimum offcuts and wastage. That plan was worked out on software that's connected to his cutting machine, which you'll see in action in this week's video update.
With each piece cut, sewing soon begins!
Week 1 - Your canvas being woven
The canvas we'll be using to make your new chore jacket has been woven especially, just 12 miles down the road from our factory.
Last month while it was being made, we were able to visit the mill while they were weaving to film the process from start to finish.
Press play on the video below to watch your fabric being made:
As your jacket will be sewn before it's dyed, every meter of fabric is made in a PFD shade which stands for 'prepared for dye', to get the very best results once we garment dye, later in the process.
A Note of Thanks 
A Note of Thanks
Welcome to the behind the scenes of Batch No.14.
Over the next couple of months we're going to show you what goes into getting your jacket made. From beginning to end. As well as some little extras. We'll aim to update this page every Friday, to show you what's been happening each week along the way.
If there's anything you'd like to see more of along the process, just ask, and we'll see what we can do.
