Established in 2004 in Dana Point, CA. Punka Pacific is a small shop where we make some innovative products usually from recycled and repurposed fabrics. Fire hose has been our favorite material but military duffel bags, Hawaiian shirts, and inflatable dinghy have been a lot of fun to work with.

We are always looking for new designs and new ways to reuse materials while reducing our footprint.

This is Adelaide Cady, my Great, Great Grandmother. She was a strong woman, work-hardened by two world wars and a great depression. She was part of the generation who fixed what was broken, built what was needed, and always found a way to put food on the table. She passed down many of her life’s lessons to my mother and also taught her how to sew.

This is Adelaide Cady’s Singer sewing machine built in 1919. This is the sewing machine that Adelaide used to teach my Mother to sew, who in turn taught me to sew. The machine was given to my Mother and somehow, after moving across the country a couple time, raising three boys, and even living in Russia for a while, the old machine endured, mostly as an accent table. Then one day, possessed by a need to know how ridiculously difficult it was to sew anything 100 years ago, I lifted to cover. The manual was still intact. There were plenty of bobbins, needles, and attachment. I found a new belt, adjusted the timing, oiled some parts, and she was humming right along throwing down stitches like those electric new-fangled jobers in the next room. I know Adelaide would be proud, mostly because anything she spent her hard earned money on had better last 100 years.

On some of my products there is a small piece of orange thread stitched in the label by this machine to pass on what is special about Adelaide Cady.