Shin Murayama Must Love Sewing Machines

Salute to a Kindred Spirit! - - - Twoness, Delicate Unit, & Masks

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Thank you for reading,

-Cale

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The Sewing Machine Newsletter would like to salute Shin Murayama, who we highly suspect of being a fellow sewing machine man.

Not long ago, I was searching for a t-shirt with a logo of a sewing machine, feeling that such a garment would help me get one step closer to completing my perfect wardrobe. Most of what I found online were shirts with a silhouette of a vintage machine, and even some humorous “crazy sewist” meme shirts, but none of those spoke to me. The search continued until late one night, after an unreasonable number of hours of perusing the interweb, I finally found it:

The choice to put the image of a semi-industrial straight stitch machine on a t-shirt was unexpected and really piqued my interest. I’ve heard it said before that there are certain comedians who are considered a “comedian’s comedian” , meaning that they might not be well-known globally or commercially successful, but other comedians tend to have deep respect for them. Well that’s how I feel about the semi-industrial straight stitch machine. Anybody who owns a Juki TL series or a Janome HD9 knows that those are bona fide workhorses and incredible machines to sew with, no matter the project. Apparently, the person who designed the shirt knew this as well. The company that makes the shirt is called Twoness, and after purchasing the sewing machine shirt shown above, I browsed their website some more. Not only do they make sewing machine shirts, they also make a variety of shirts and sweatshirts with a logo of fabric shears:

Now I’m really curious. It’s obvious that this brand Twoness is ran by genuine sewing machine people. My animal instincts kick in. I catch a whiff of a fellow sewing machine man, and down the rabbit hole I go. Several google searches later and I am led to a name: Shin Murayama.

Twoness appears to be a mere side project of Mr. Murayama. As much as I appreciate his sewing machines shirts and shears ahirts, I am much more taken by some of his other work. For example, he is involved in another project called Delicate Unit, which, as far as I can tell, is a collaborative project that resulted in a series of bomber jackets.

The detail on these bomber jackets is incredible. Look closely and you’ll see a marriage of different sewing techniques take place on a singular garment. As someone who sells sewing machines for a living, I want one to wear this as my work uniform because I could point to different aspects of the jacket and use it to sell every type of sewing machine we carry:

• Machine embroidery is used to embroider the words “Delicate Unit” in Old English font, as well as the logo of the Joker’s head impaled on a stick.

• Appliqué is used to sew the obscure beer company panels onto the back and the sleeves.

• Garment construction is obviously used to create the jacket itself.

I would also argue that there is an element of quilting in these bomber jackets.