Blue 5-Inch 1911 Denim CCW
My brother bought himself a five-inch-barreled, Para single-stack. He absolutely loves that gun, and I don’t really blame him. He asked me to make a CCW holster for it. Like me, my brother is not a big guy. He’s about 5′4″, 150-lbs. He didn’t want to go IWB, so I built him a 45-degree pancake. I wanted the holster to vaguely look like denim, so if it peeked out it would largely blend in against his jeans. My brother wears jeans a lot, and the jeans he wears are usually a pretty vibrant blue. So, I wanted to play off that a little.
The holster I wound up making is textured like denim and has some mottled color like a broken-in pair of jeans. The actual color of blue that I wound up with is a bit brighter, though. One of the nice things about working for friends and family is that you can push the envelope a little and they won’t hate you for it. I knifed an inscription in the mud-flap, behind the gun’s frame, and I knifed an inscription on the back of this one with my initials, his initials and the year.
As you can see, this is another one of my hidden-stitch holsters. This would be the third that I’ve made in the style. Like the previous two, rigidity and strength has been far superior to a traditional, single-layer holster. I’m going to try doing this with thinner leather to see how that comes out. But anyway, my brother does wear his holster, and seems to enjoy it, and it will hide that full-sized 1911 under a T-shirt. I would call that a success!
