I’m rarely a brand loyalist – however with things I stick in my mouth and ingest I can be somewhat picky about. I’ve been exclusively drinking Just Coffee Co-op coffee now for a little over 3 years – since late October 2013. A month prior I stumbled upon a neat-looking bag at a grocer – it stood out for its high-contrast, bold art, almost Seth Tobacman-like in its style and visuals. Further investigation of the label revealed they were a worker-owned cooperative and I believe back then the label Wobbly-printed as well.

Anyhow I was so enthusiastic with the one 12 oz. bag I bought that I looked up the company online, found their store, and ordered a few more bags to try out. Since then I’ve been hooked (and holy crap I just did not some quick addition and have consumed 45 lbs. of their coffee over 3 years!! If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend the ‘Cabin Fever’ seasonal blend – that’s my favorite!).

Back to the art: the bags are different now, but the early art was printed on separate labels and either glued on or printed on sticker-paper. It was pretty DIY, but looked great – the art was fantastic. Fast-forward a couple years and they now have these really good quality foil-lined bags – and the art is still stellar:

So much so that I start to ‘collect’ the art on my own coffee bags after finishing their beany contents! Wasn’t sure what to do with them for the longest time, so sadly departed with a small pile of cut-outs about a year ago.

Then it recently dawned on me: patches! The foil seemed like it might naturally press onto fabric – but it doesn’t. I didn’t want to simply glue the cut-outs on, but then stumbled upon this ‘fusing web’ material. Assumed it would be backed on one side with adhesive but it is not – it’s just loose material, because in all likelihood you’re fusing fabric to fabric. Since that wasn’t my case I spray-glued the back of the foil and applied the fusing web. I then cut out the desired shape, and placed parchment paper between the patch and the clothing iron. The ‘patch’ slightly weathered around the edge but that look is actually quite nice, as it ages the patch immediately, which fits with my apparel:

From what I can tell the ‘patch’ is there to stay. Its edges are almost seamless with the jacket, which itself is made from Nomex (flight jacket). I’ll monitor how it ‘weathers’ over time or possibly peels away, but otherwise this is a pretty good application and ‘upcycling’ of the art from these bags that would otherwise just get tossed.

(To not get that effect on the edge of the patch I’m thinking a heat gun might work – it could fuse the webbing material without the direct contact of the iron. If the direct stream of hot air still proves too much perhaps using the heat gun to heat another material like aluminum foil that will then transfer the heat to the patch would suffice – I’ll experiment and update my findings here!)

Next up:

stuffs