 I make a lot of my own clothes and bags and equipment and over the years I have gone through this evolution of making some stuff that end up not using and other stuff that end up using a lot and then figuring out what's good and what's not good and then you know improving things and I'm going to share with you right now some of my go-to clothing and equipment and this is stuff I use when I'm working adventuring you know not stuff where I'm hanging out at home this is for like doing stuff all right first I'll start with this hoodie this I just made and it's because I have another one of these that I've worn almost every day for about the last four months even though I only have one I was washing it every day and in the morning when I go out to do stuff even if it was still damp from the day before I'd choose it over everything else so what's so good about this thing well let's start with the hood yeah it's a hoodie it's got a hood so this is great because it keeps the sun off my head obviously and also it keeps bugs from getting me the the other day I was cutting a perimeter around this 24 acre property I have and it's basically just hacking through the jungle making a mile long path so like tarantulas are falling on my head and you know crabs falling on me it doesn't matter it just bounces off no problem now if I didn't have a hood I would be worried about things falling in my ah creepy crawlies and stuff so the hood is excellent now the the shape and size of the hood is good too it works particularly well if I'm wearing a baseball cap because that keeps the front stuck out and so it it leans away out and blocks all the sun and you know keeps the tarantulas from getting close to my face they just fall right off so the hood is excellent what else have we got here okay usually with hoodies there is a pocket and it's right here right except when you put stuff in there if you try to run or anything it ends up jostling around all over the place and things fall out it's not that great it interferes with movement so whenever I have pockets or ways of storing stuff on my body I try to put the pockets in places where I don't move much so I keep them like on my torso not on my legs or arms so I've got one pocket on this it's right here and it's got a flap over it which is very important so if I go swimming when I'm swimming the the pocket doesn't catch water and fill up and become a parachute because it's got this flap over that's sewed down the sides to keep it on top of there so as the water goes past it just runs right over and it doesn't become a parachute now this is particularly important when diving into the water and hitting the water fast I've had shirt pockets rip out because they don't have this flap on top we'll just catch the water rip off right so that helps a lot now the material is this nylon heavy duty I don't know if you have like a a nylon bag that's pretty rugged kind of thing that that's what this is made out of I bought a giant roll of this from some surplus place really cheap and this is basically what all this stuff is made out of I'll get a sleeve caught on like a dead branch on the tree and it'll rip the branch off the tree before it rips this before when I was wearing cotton stuff more nothing against cotton that's what I wear when I'm just chilling but when I'm working the cotton would just like rip half the sleeve off and then I'd be like oh great now I need to like fix this or get a new shirt or whatever so this thing is great now another feature of this that I did not realize was going to be good when I did it is the front here is sewn straight down originally I was going to put buttons in here but when I made the first one I was just feeling like I don't know I just didn't feel like doing it and I wanted to just put the thing on and go do some stuff and worry about the buttons later so I ran one stitch down the front so it would be easy to rip out so I could put the buttons in later however that stitch is still in the original one and I found that I like it stitched up in the front more than buttons for a couple reasons one when you have buttons it leaves space so things could get in there this I don't have to worry about it I don't have to worry about buttons popping open or if I get this caught you know snagged on something as I'm walking past it's not going to rip a button off because it's just sewn straight now why would you want buttons given all that information because it's easier to get off and on right with the buttons however I found that it's actually easier with it sewn on right down the front now it's easier to get your arms in and get everything on when you have buttons but then you still have to do all do up all the buttons and when it's sewed like this you have to pull it up over your head now if I try to pull it up from the front I mean from the top if I'm sweaty or wet or anything it the thing sticks to me and it's hard to get off so I just pull it from the bottom oh let me get my hat off okay so that's easy to get off and on like that right except what's the problem now it's inside out so I have to turn it back right side out to put it back on right no because in this one I made the seams good on both sides now normally so anyway I can just put this right back off so uh normally when you sew the easiest way to do seams is to take your cloth like this you run a stitch along and then when you open it up you end up with a thing like this so on the outside you have a nice neat seam on the inside you have this like little flap of cloth now in working clothes that can be a problem because it gets damaged and starts fraying you end up with all these threads inside and also it can catch dirt and sand and stuff and where you've got a seam like this it can rub and as you're moving around all day it can slowly kind of wear on your skin until you get rubbed raw and then you're like oh man this feels terrible however on this I put my my seams together like this ran a stitch through and then folded the fabric like this and then ran another stitch over the whole thing well actually like triple stitch the whole thing so that way it's the same from the inside and the outside it's got a smooth seam either way so I can take it off it flips inside out I just put it back on right now it's inside out the only thing is the pockets on the inside so if I really need the pocket I mean I could put one on this side too but I only have one because I don't really need it that often so uh in my other one of these my sleeves are a little bit shorter this one I made them a little bit longer but uh you know I don't I like it a lot I wear this like every day and it's great um oh and the design for it it's basically like a button-up shirt from here down with uh with a hood on instead of a collar and the hood's just you know shaped like that it's pretty simple and then you know I made the sleeves longer and took out the buttons okay second piece of equipment my shorts hold on let me get this up okay my shorts I've had for longer than my my hoodie and I have two pairs of these and they're the only shorts I wear when I'm going out working same as with the hoodie and these are basically the shorts version of the hoodie um there the main shorts are just two pieces so there's a seam down the middle there's no seam down the sides just one piece of cloth here one piece of cloth here super simple to make jawstring at the top so if I you know pig out I can loosen it or if I'm working all day and starting to shrink up get skinny and I can tighten it like it just did so I don't want to fall off on the camera anyway and then I've also got a pocket here same style as in the hoodie so that as I'm swimming water runs over it doesn't catch into it and the pocket is up on my hips now the same reason I had the pocket over there up here instead of down you know in cargo shorts often the pockets are down here but if you put stuff in your pockets down there sure you can walk but if you try to run everything's like flying around like crazy but up here I can put my wallet in here or my tape measure screwdriver whatever and I can run around and it's not jostling around that much so it's good okay so that's that's the basic stuff that I wear pretty much every day and this is back to right side out now not that it matters okay other stuff yes it's a wizard hat this is basically like having a mobile shade roof so anytime I'm out in the sun and I don't want to have a hood on for some reason I'll wear this and it's like being in the shade and the same thing with the you know the tarantulas and stuff falling on my head just goes right off the side it even keeps rain off me if I'm getting rained on tarantulas are not always falling on my head don't worry now up here there's a white band of cloth now that's separate from the rest so there's a bit of an airspace between so when sun hits here the heat kind of like comes off before it gets into the part that's touching my head so helps keep my head cool and then I've also got two little loops here so I can attach a string if if I ever get to the point where I feel like this is too easy to blow off my head I attach a string here and tie it although I haven't had that problem partly because I've got a copper wire running through the brim so that means I can shape the hat to be whatever I need it to be and so I have it high in the front so I can see easily and it comes down on the side so that when the wind hits it doesn't catch it and blow it up it instead ends up just kind of going like that and not blowing the hat the hat off my head and uh if I need to change the shape or anything I can do that with the wire here so wizard hat very useful all right what else have I gotten here pockets so sometimes I want more pockets than I have and this is basically just a basic drawstring bag with the string going back down to the bottom right so there we got an extra pocket so uh if I want to carry my wallet or fire starting stuff some tools whatever I can put them in here and it's pretty much out of the way the string short enough that again the pocket is like on my torso not getting hit by my legs or not in the way of my arms and I can put it to the back if I need to you know do stuff out in the front here and one of the things I really like about having external pockets is that I don't have to empty all my pockets before I go swimming or before I wash my clothes or whatever I can just take it off and then I've got the same stuff in here tomorrow that I had today and it's all ready to go so if I have like certain tools that I'm taking with me every day I don't have to put them in and out of my pockets every day I just keep them in there okay this next thing I honestly made because I was feeling in a bit of a silly mood I just I was just I just felt like making a cape I was like I think I should make a cape and I did not realize how useful it was going to be so I don't use this when I'm going out to do stuff so much I'll wear this early in the morning and in the evening like dawn and dusk because that's when the bugs come out and I can come out and if I'm standing around I can just go like this the bugs don't get me at all if I really want the bugs to not get me or if I'm out in the middle of the day and it's hot and sunny and there's no shade around and I'm not being that I'm not doing that much stuff I just want to have some some shade with me it's like basically like having a shade tent with me all the time now if I want to get out of the way just throw it over my shoulders now it's out of the way I can use my arms if I it's light enough that if I run it just floats up behind me doesn't get in the way at all so I made this to kind of be a silly thing however it's been surprisingly useful oh and I gotta show you my stylish back adventure builder symbol of course all right what else we got in here that was a bag all right now we've got this this is my favorite backpack of all time and I have gone through a lot of backpacks I've lived off grid for a long time my last house was a mile from the nearest road so I was hiking things to my house and back constantly with backpacks and I would pick up any backpacks I saw in thrift stores so I get them for like a dollar or two I had like 20 different backpacks frame packs all kinds of backpacks this is my favorite one I've ever had so what are the basic features let's go through the whole thing okay first the straps a lot of store bought backpacks that are sold for hiking and stuff they have padding in here which I find to be useless because it's a piece of cloth it's not it's padding isn't going to do anything it's already a flexible thing what matters is how wide the straps are because the wider they are the more the weight spread out and the less it's going to cut off your circulation to your arms when you're carrying like a hundred two hundred pounds of stuff in the bag right so I made these pretty wide they're good I can put a hundred pounds in here easy no problem now it's a little bit loose which is fine for walking it makes it because the straps are a little loose and they're adjustable because it's got this string here that just goes between there and there I can I can change if I need but I keep it kind of loose so it's easy to get off and off and then if if I want to run and I'm carrying a big load I can go to take these two strings here grab them like this and now the thing is like stuck to me I can run full speed with this thing on and it's not jostling around and flying around I've run full speed with this with like a hundred pounds in it I've also carried my daughter around in this it was pretty funny when I first made it she got in and I picked it up carried her around it's uh it handles weight really well it's very comfortable to wear and one of the things I don't have that I see in a lot of uh you know store-bought bags that are made for hiking and carrying weight is the hip whatever you call it the hip strap thing that makes it so the weight is on your hips I never liked that because it would interfere with my butt muscles and like you know make it harder to walk cut off circulation and stuff so I just want the weight up here now maybe if I was like maybe if I was a girl and I had bigger hips and smaller shoulders I'd want it different but being built the way I am I definitely want the weight supported up here so all those things it's really good I think I'm going to take you inside to show you the the rest of things okay so we went over the straps I've also got a thing here to just pick it up whatever it's not that important now the main bag part is basically just a big drawstring bag that fits what's inside it we'll get to that in a second and I've got lots of you know reinforcing strips so that the weight from the straps is transferred down to the bottom corner and you know it's reinforced a bunch of times so the straps are really strong they're not going to rip out now all right let's get to the bag part I wasn't sure if this was going to work out all right but it's been surprisingly good okay so normally when you have a backpack getting into the top is kind of a pain when you've got stuff down at the bottom that you want to get to because you know everything is just piled in there and you got a root around this little hole in the top well with this you go like that and you can get to everything I mean everything is so easy to get to and then if there's stuff I want to get to more often I'll just put it up on the top here and the the bag is tight enough around this crate thing that if I put stuff up here it doesn't fall down the side and I can just draw a string up there anything that'll fit up there will basically stay where it is and I'll take this and I've got extra long strings here so I can tie stuff onto the back I've got loopy loops here where's kind of going to call them loopy loops so I can put the strings through there so maybe I want to tie my sandals on here I can I can tie them on like that or I can crisscross these through these other two loops down here and you know attach my tennis racket or boots or whatever or sleeping bag I can tie stuff onto the back of here and it works very well and of course I don't have to use these strings like if I want to be able to open this a lot I can just have a separate string or rope or whatever to tie stuff on the back of here and then I've also got pockets on the sides that's pretty obvious basic stuff what is in there cardboard yeah I think that's it I was originally thinking it was going to be a pain to get in and out of this bag but the first time I did that I was like oh it's so easy so I take this grocery shopping with me and I stack stuff up all in here and if I have breakable stuff you know it's got a hard frame it protects everything and so easy to close and open love this bag it's my favorite bag of all time ah there's one thing I forgot about my hoodie here if I go swimming with my hoodie I take the hood and stuff it down the back of my shirt so it doesn't become a parachute and catch all the water and then it works no problem