TENDERLOIN / Sewing solo, artist tends to city's rips / Once a month, he repairs clothes for free -- and gets stories in return

Michael Swaine sews on his sewing machine setup on a cart, on Ellis Street in front of the Cohen Alley gate in the Tenderloin district. Swaine repairs and hems clothes free of charge for anybody who asks. Event on 11/15/05 in San Francisco. Darryl Bush / The Chronicle less Michael Swaine sews on his sewing machine setup on a cart, on Ellis Street in front of the Cohen Alley gate in the Tenderloin district. Swaine repairs and hems clothes free of charge for anybody who asks. ... more Photo: Darryl Bush Photo: Darryl Bush Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close TENDERLOIN / Sewing solo, artist tends to city's rips / Once a month, he repairs clothes for free -- and gets stories in return 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

On the 15th day of every month Michael Swaine can be found on the sidewalk near the Senator Hotel in the Tenderloin district. He's usually perched behind his vintage sewing machine, stitching patches onto worn jacket linings, hemming trousers and repairing tears in ladies' blouses -- all for free.

Swaine, 34, a trained artist, calls it his "Reap What You Sew Generosity Project." In 2002, Swaine turned an old-fashioned ice cream cart into a mobile sewing table. On a cast-iron, treadle-operated machine -- last patented in 1911 -- Swaine tends to the neighborhood's rips and seams. Most of his customers live in the long-term hotels that line the streets. About one in 50 is a hipster who's sought out his quirky services, said Swaine. But he'll sew for anyone who asks, and occasionally provide fashion advice.

He imagines there will be a time when the 15th comes and he might not want to be a volunteer tailor, but that hasn't happened yet.

"It's part therapy, part story time," Swaine said.

Veronica Hutch is one of his regulars. Hutch lives in a nearby hotel and supports herself with SSI. The dark circles under her eyes and her stooped back make her appear older than her 32 years. But she's a style maven, especially fond of the elegant simplicity of the 1940s and '50s, she said.

Hutch follows fashion trends on the Internet in the public library. Every month she brings a bag full of clothes she's found, and asks Swaine to make adjustments.

"Some of the others get mad (that she brings so much), but she sort of smiles in her cute way -- I think she brings the big bag because I don't think she ever wants me to say 'OK, you're finished,' " Swaine said. "She wants to sit and talk all day."

On one Saturday, she brought a clipping about Jackie Onassis, her all-time favorite fashion figure, wearing a fur-trimmed jacket. Swaine was busy sewing a fake brown fur onto the hood of her pink velour jacket.

"It's like asking a top fashion designer, like Oleg Cassini, to do something for you," said Hutch while she fingered the next project, a gray, silk pillbox hat that needed hand mending.

Toshio Takakura, who lives in an apartment across the street, helps Swaine with the hand-sewing jobs, but he's busy explaining to an elderly Russian man in a black wool hat that he can't fix plastic zippers, only metal ones, and the language barrier is confusing the exchange.

Often, the sun sets before Swaine is able to finish all the jobs he's asked to do.

"I'll be back next month," Swaine says.

Asked what the neighbors will do without him, Swain says he does not want to create a sewing dependency in the neighborhood. He has visions of turning an adjacent mini park into a sewing center of sorts, where neighbors could come sew for themselves.

Swaine has a studio in Alamo Park, and is currently looking for an apartment. In addition to textile design projects that bring in some money, Swaine supports himself with a collection of odd jobs. Currently, he's helping a friend clean and repair antique locks.

The Luggage Store, an art gallery at Ellis and Hyde, helps sponsor Swaine's project and lets him use its alley to set up his mending station.

Daryl Smith, co-director of the Luggage Store gallery, envisions Swaine mending not only physical fabrics, but the social fabrics of the neighborhood as well. Smith said it fits into the kind of community art projects the gallery supports.

"We put art into these rarefied boxes," Smith said. "But the practice of it in the public realm is really the highest form of art."

Swaine said he tried mending in other neighborhoods, and everyone was excited about what he was doing. But "the Tenderloin appreciated it the most," he said. "It had the most holes to be fixed."