The quest for Pillow Ticking

[bootsnthejeep]

So, after having good success with my regular cotton flannel cleaning patches as a stand-in for proper round ball patches in my smokepole, I did some research and decided I had to have me some of this pillow ticking stuff.

Armed with my dial calipers and a vague notion of what I was after, I started hitting up the local stores. I hate WalMart. With a passion. So I try to avoid going there if I can. There's plenty of local sewing shops and fabric wholesalers around. I'll keep my money relatively more local if possible.

You want to talk about odd looks. I'm sure most of you guys look just as out of place in Jo-Ann Fabrics as I do. Overweight, hulking bearded guy, shuffling thru every aisle because my A.D.D. and curiosity won't let me NOT see everything in the store before settling into the search thru the bargain bins of cloth. Not to mention if I've just gotten out of work, I'm filthy with grease and grime, and even after 10 minutes at the slop sink scrubbing my hands and arms, they're as clean as they get, which is to say not very, so I'm getting ugly looks from the cloth marms as I check the material, generally at arms length to avoid leaning on anything.

The local shops were worse. Smaller selection, and smaller shops, so forget just browsing with anonymity. Eventually, the dreaded "Well, what are you looking for?", followed by as vague a description as I can muster. All cotton. No synthetics. High thread count. Cheap. Then they get to "What color?". The answer, "Doesn't matter" does NOT cut the mustard with these people.

Then they want to know what it's for. Generally, I have the bad judgment to tell the truth. Reactions range from blank stares to bald outrage, with smatterings of incomprehending ignorance. One woman, who was trying VERY hard to be helpful, bless her heart, after I told her that this was merely to hold the ball in the rifling and would be discarded enroute to the target, she kept bringing me brighter and more garish patterns in the hopes these would "Show up better". I don't know if she thought I was gathering up and recycling the patches or if I was using this as some kind of fabric tracer round, but I ended up getting the hell out of there. Empty handed.

And did I mention that everytime I brought up the words "pillow ticking" they had NO clue what I was talking about?

With much gnashing of teeth, this morning I struck out for the Wally World. A SUPER CENTER, no less. Complete with jammed parking lot.

At length, after finally locating the fabric section (and refilling my canteen twice), I walk amongst the two shelves of fabric.

AND THERE IT IS! LO AND BEHOLD! THREE BOLTS OF THE STUFF!

And that was just the blue stripe! Two more bolts of the red! Why the HELL does WalMart stock this stuff and the local places don't? Are people really making pillows? Or are the black powder guys keeping this stuff around?

And the worst part? The goon that waited on me and cut the fabric for me? Was quizzing me as to my purposes with the Pillow Ticking, and I noticed as I went on that he kept asking more and more pointed questions, and I finally figured out that instead of seeking information, HE was quizzing ME to see if I knew what I was talking about, because he knew more about this stuff than I ever could have read about! And he started rambling on about the civil war this and cloth availability that. I couldn't believe it. When was the last time you were waited on in a Wal Mart by someone who actually knew something about the section they were working in??

So I have my precious yard of pillow ticking. And two more yards of cotton flannel for cleaning patches. And a grudging respect for the guy that works the fabric counter at Wal Mart.

It's drying on the line. Shooting will commence next weekend. I sure hope this stuff is worth all the aggravation.

Boots

[JeffinNZ]

Welcome to the fold of males in fabric stores with micrometers (MFSWM).

Ticking is good but drill cotton and denim do just as well.

[northmn]

Kind of reminds me of the time I went to find lipstick for inletting metal parts for a muzzle loader into wood. Makes good stuff with a bright color being the best. Somehow I got to explaining to the sales woman what I wanted it for and somehow the explanations did not seem to register. The more I started to explain the more her opinion of my needs seemed to get reinforced. Main thing was that I wanted cheap bright lipstick.
Fabrics that work well for ML's also include cotton muslin, drill and cotton duck as well as pillow ticking. A yard of the stuff goes a long way.

DP

[bootsnthejeep]

There was an oustanding story on an ice fishing board that I'm on about a guy making his own jigs out of soldering wire and hooks, and he painted them with fingernail polish. So it was bad enough he was always perusing and comparing fingernail polish, but then he saw a girl in the mall, replete with enormous baggy trousers, enough makeup to make a zombie movie wince, and looking like she'd been dragged thru someone's tacklebox, and she had on CHARTREUSE nail polish. A color of which he'd been really wanting to use, but they didn't make polish in that color, or so he thought. He accosted her (imagine, a giant redneck in workboots rushing up to a goth kid and imploring her to tell him where she got that nail polish), and she informed him that there was store in that very mall, called Hot Topic, that sold that and all KINDS of other nail polish.

Dude beats feet over there, bursts into the store, and has half a dozen bottles in his hands (Chartreuse! Blaze orange! Bright pink! Hot damn, its homemade fishing lure HEAVEN!) when he turns around, and realizes he's being blatantly stared at by a dozen goth kids AND all the employees of the store. As I recall, he explained it to the gal at the register, and she thought it was funny as hell.

How do we always manage to put ourselves in such fish-out-of-water situations?

[Razor]

How do we always manage to put ourselves in such fish-out-of-water situations?

Talent, pure talent.

[coopieclan]

I have that fish out of water experience when I go to wig makers and floral supply places for my work and I don't work with hair or flowers.

The men who work @ those shops also have funny ideas about me.

[DIRT Farmer]

No need to discuss 3 guys in a pickup stoping past the C-store buying 3 rubbers at 4AM of opening morning of turkey season.
The gals at Hancock fabrics saw me walk in with the mike in my hand and one of them said follow me before I said anything. We went to the scrap table and she sorted out the drill and ticking, ask if I needed flanel for cleaning.
Seems her family are shooters.

[gnoahhh]

Ha ha ha!! Thank you. These posts made me smile as those are the exact same experiences I've had. The girl at the local Jo-Ann fabric store didn't want to sell me white cotton flannel for cleaning patches once, when I made the mistake of telling her what it was for. I schmoozed her and she sold me the stuff, then she met me for happy hour at the bar across the street. Great evening!

Then there was the time I (6'1" bearded middle-aged guy) was trying on red dresses at the Goodwill store, for a benefit-gag run put on by my beer drinking running club (don't ask). The looks I was getting that day!! Finally a kind lady said "are you a hasher?" and volunteered to help. Seems her husband endured the same ordeal a couple of years earlier!

[runnin lead]

Nice to live where people understand this stuff. The wallyworld here nolonger has a fabric dept other than prepackaged stuff hanging on pegboard, you can hear elk bugle from their parking lot in the fall
I was excited to find a new sewing shop in town & while talking about it brand spankin used Janine, the owner of the second hand store Brand Spankin Used told me she had some muslin in her shop , told her I would be in to check it out when it warms up.

[John Taylor]

I still remember the kind lady that helped me when I pulled out my micrometer and said I was looking for pillow ticking over twenty years ago. She watched with a smile as I measured several pieces and made a selection. As they say, you learn something new every day, she learned what pillow ticking was really made for.

[ktw]

I've had the 'in the fabric shop with a calipers' experience. I actually had the clerk at Walmart try to explain to me why I wanted double knap fabric for cleaning patches rather than single knap.

Another one that hasn't been mentioned yet is violin tuning pegs for muzzleloader powder horn spout plugs. My wife and kids play violin and on one of our trips to the violin shop I asked for old tuning pegs. They had thousands of them in a drawer. He explained to me that they were worn out and not good for much any more. I told him I wasn't going to use them on violins and could make them work. He gave me a double handful for the asking.

-ktw

[Hanshi]

I've fired thousands of rounds using old t-shirts for patches. They worked fairly well in factory guns with their shallow rifling. Years back when I got a custom rifle with deep rifling there was more room to compress patch material and I started relying in ticking. WalMart was my supply for many years. When I moved to another state the local WalMart didn't have much, if any, material. I guess they're getting out of the cloth business. Now it's Jo-Anns and they are noticeably more expensive. Oh, well.

[Erich]

Wow, am I glad I clicked on this thread! Great stories, all - thanks so much.

[ironhead7544]

Best to place the colored side down with the stripe parallel with the front sight. Cut with a very sharp knife or straight razor.

[Mumblypeg]

Aw man, that's nothing... I sew. So going to the fabric shop is nothing new to me. I'm just now finishing up a new shirt for my next event at a Civil War re-enactment which will be the 150th firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston on April 12th. Heck, I know more about sewing than a lot of women. But yea, they just look at you sometimes.

[waksupi]

Best to place the colored side down with the stripe parallel with the front sight. Cut with a very sharp knife or straight razor.

What kind of testing have you done to come up with this?

[gnoahhh]

Yes, inquiring minds want to know.

[JeffinNZ]

Aw man, that's nothing... I sew. So going to the fabric shop is nothing new to me. I'm just now finishing up a new shirt for my next event at a Civil War re-enactment which will be the 150th firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston on April 12th. Heck, I know more about sewing than a lot of women. But yea, they just look at you sometimes.

Me too! I have my mum's old treedle machine and made all my own colonial clothing etc.

There. I said it. I have a sewing machine in my man cave and I can use it!!!

[bootsnthejeep]

I'm currently on the hunt for an old machine capable of some heavy duty work. I think my mom might have a treadle machine still. That appeals to my off-grid aspirations.

[RBak]

bootsinthejeep, the one that lives in the "Traylah", in Maine, I honestly can't say when I last laughed as hard as I did while reading your posts.

Good stuff! A very welcome kind of humor, IMO.
My granddaughter explained to me about the "goth" type kids, otherwise you would have lost me completely there, still funny as heck though.

Russ