The Details

I fiddled with the reel a little bit. I wanted it to somehow stay at the bottom of the pocket, so that it would bring the device into the pocket when it retracted. I bought some medal and cut off a long piece so that it went down to the bottom of my pocket and I curved the top so that it would fit tightly over the lip of my pocket. I then attacked the reel to the bottom of the metal strip so that the reel stayed at the bottom of the pocket and could more easily retract the string and the handkerchief back into the pocket after use.

I have begun focusing on the details of the handkerchief as well. The first model that I built had two straight openings for the fingers. I found it difficult to slip my pointer finger into the slot while it was in my pocket. My solution to this was to make a horizontal slit with the vertical one, that way I could stick my finger into the horizontal slit and on the way up to my face, slide it into its final position in the vertical slot. Another thing I tested was the use of magnets to keep the device closed when not used. I found that the magnets were not strong enough to keep both sides together. I experimented with attaching the handkerchief with the reel as well. I sewed one side of a snap onto the device and kept the other one on the reel. It worked well, but I decided to move the snap onto the pointer finger side of the device because it would help it go into the pocket better.

The second model I made out of the black polypropylene material. I bought it in the bag form at walmart and it cost more than the blue bag did and I wasn't sure why. It turns out that it is thicker, consisting of two polypropylene layers rather than one. I kept the placement of the finger holes for this model but changed the horizontal and vertical slits of the pointer finger hole into a curve to show the movement of the finger within the slit. I used velcro to keep the wings of the device closed instead of magnets because I found that they could possibly harm a dryer if washed. The velcro worked well, but I needed to play with the placement of it on the next model more. I also changed the position of the snap to the other side and it worked much better.

The third model I changed the placement of the velcro to where my fingers were so that I could more easily press it together. It worked better, but I feel like it needs to be placed on the inner layer of fabric rather than the outer layer. I attached some snap ons that I bought that must be forcefully applied with a hammer and it cut through the fabric and it didn't on the thicker black fabric, so in order to use these snaps, I will have to do two layers of the blue fabric. I played with my sewing technique on this model as well. I made the stitches larger and used a bright and contrasting color to the blue (orange) thread and spaced out the stitches and made them larger.