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 Actually complete! I even put the hardware on to link the sections so it's very stable now. Next up, sewing hems onto satin for swag on the ceiling.
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Aug 7, 2022 18:24
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That is just genius and would have saved me so much money over the decades. I’d I have, finally after 20 years found a sewing table that fits a quilting machine. Gidget II, it’s fully assembled, folding, but has wheels on one side so you can move it. Sewing online has them on sale for £179, last I saw it anywhere it was £350
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Aug 10, 2022 20:41
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learnincurve posted:That is just genius and would have saved me so much money over the decades. I’d Thanks! I built the frames and stretched jute and elastic webbing on it, so the bases are very light.  My wife just got a dress in the mail and said it was a bit loose and I went "oh do you want me to take it in?". She's absolutely delighted to have this service in home. That looks like a nice table, better than the folding one I am using. Maybe after a few more projects I'll pick one up and say "why didn't I buy this earlier" Edit: I should also plug the fabric calculator at Sailrites website. Plug in your cushion dimensions and it gives you a simple pattern for a box corner cushion. Takes about an hour per cushion for me. I ended up making a couple of templates for the repeatable cuts and got a bit faster on the last few. StormDrain fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Aug 10, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2022 20:59
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Ok that’s next level, weaving, carpentry, haberdashery all separate skill sets. The tables with the drop down is a game changer, you have no idea how unnecessary hard you are working your wrists and arms until you get the machine at the right height. The usual problem with fold down is that they bounce so they got to be extremely heavy duty, look for ones so heavy they need the wheels, otherwise get the non-fold down and because you have the skills add on some extra support bars.
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Aug 10, 2022 21:30
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StormDrain posted:Thanks! I built the frames and stretched jute and elastic webbing on it, so the bases are very light. That looks super amazing, is it a big money saver over buying pre-made, or is this more from the perspective of being less lovely to move to a new place in the future? I'm tempted to get something like this going for my place, except I probably need to get a sewing machine again...didn't have space in the car for my cross-country move for the one I had at my parents' house. I also don't think I'd ever get it done if I was hand-sewing the cushions.
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Aug 13, 2022 08:16
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taiyoko posted:That looks super amazing, is it a big money saver over buying pre-made, or is this more from the perspective of being less lovely to move to a new place in the future? I'm tempted to get something like this going for my place, except I probably need to get a sewing machine again...didn't have space in the car for my cross-country move for the one I had at my parents' house. I also don't think I'd ever get it done if I was hand-sewing the cushions. Sadly it was comparable to purchasing one, although I wasn't able to find any in the dimensions I built to. I also had a goal of having the back cushions on the chaise side able to go onto a mini pullout for a queen size guest bed, able to be covered with a sheet. It came out janky, although it met a secret criteria of being comfortable for a guest but not for too long. Mostly I wanted a really deep and low couch, the bottom cushions are 39" deep. I probably could have bought one 36" deep and a bit higher. The cushions are about 11" off the ground. Next up is a little chair I call the peacock chair, which was made by a furniture and birdcage company.
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Aug 14, 2022 01:59
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Peacock chair. I took for granted how difficult this would be. I need a good piping foot as it's hard to get a nice tight stich. I also traced the old upholstery which gave me an out of round template. I'll probably redo this.
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Aug 14, 2022 03:52
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StormDrain posted:Peacock chair. I took for granted how difficult this would be. I need a good piping foot as it's hard to get a nice tight stich. I also traced the old upholstery which gave me an out of round template. I'll probably redo this. 1) Love the fabric choice. 2) I am really amused that your sewing area looks like mine, down to wrapping paper, a pile of muslin, and some free weights for a dumbbell hanging out. I mean, yeah, I do use the weights as intended, but the flat solid iron ones make great pattern weights, too! Here's the best shirt I've ever made, I think. I never wear sleeveless shirts, but we've had 100F + temperatures here for like a month solid and I've given up. I used the Itch to Stitch Bonn shirt as my template, since I've made it several times before and knew the armscyes wouldn't need much adjusting. I took 1.25" off the shoulders and .25" off the rest (the armscye always fit REALLY close) and finished it with single-fold bias tape. Added a little dart at the armscye to control some gaping after I finished (and will just draw it like that next time). I did keep taking width away at the side seams at the bust level to help with the armscye shape, and now it's got, like, .5" of ease there, so I better not change bra sizes! Fabric is 100% linen, about 155gsm, cross-dyed in black & white, from Emma One Sock. 
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Aug 14, 2022 16:38
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I've just inherited a JC Penney 6923. This will be my first sewing machine. It came with no bobbins and no foot pedal. I did a quick search on ebay but didn't find anything. Are they all standardized or will I need to go to a specialty shop? The foot pedal seems like a standard connector, but I've never paid close attention to the ones I've used before. It also didnt come with needles, but those have got to be interchangeable. Happiness Commando fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Aug 17, 2022 |
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Aug 17, 2022 02:11
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Needles are universal, but bobbins are NOT. Your local quilt shop should be able to help you with a pedal, or at least know someone who can help you.
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Aug 17, 2022 02:32
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Hmm. This machine is almost exactly identical, and supposedly uses class 15 bobbins. But I've been playing a bit and noticing that its sticking mechanically when I try to rotate the handwheel. But only sometimes. I'll take it to a repair shop and see what they think. Thanks!
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Aug 17, 2022 03:06
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Hi really sorry for jumping kind of randomly into a thread, but I'm trying to figure out an apparently ungooglable quilting term. A bunch of nerds who are also nerds about sewing seemed like a pretty natural place and I hoped someone by chance might know the answer. Does anyone here know what a "surprise quilt" is? What is the difference between that kind of quilt and another quilt? It's in a book, mentioned randomly off-hand and I'm just inappropriately invested in this curiosity quest now. If you google "surprise quilt" you get giant swathes of quilting jargon that I can't parse, so I don't even know where to start looking in pages and pages of quilting forum discussions. Sorry again for bursting in. I know that's kind of weird and rude, but I'm hoping it's not too great an affront to the august body of the SA forums.
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Aug 17, 2022 06:35
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There is a super popular quilt block (completed square) called “pinwheel surprise” that’s come in vogue, in context could it be that? Edit: it used to be cathedral window, and I suspect it’s people on Etsy not liking the religious name so changed it to something stupid instead. learnincurve fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Aug 17, 2022 |
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Aug 17, 2022 14:03
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It doesn't seem like it? The only detail about the quilt is the next passage that goes on to describe the little domestic agrarian scene depicted on it, which seems like it'd be in opposition to any kind of geometric design. But also what the hell do I know. And of course, there's decent odds the author doesn't know anything about quilts and is using the word wrong.
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Aug 17, 2022 15:53
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I also googled it with similar results, but I saw some that might apply. One is using it to mean you don't know what it will look like in the end (typically called quilt as you go). This doesn't seem to be the case if it depicts a scene. Another use was getting blocks contributed from other people so the end result is a surprise. I guess this could include some kind of scene. I am curious, what book is it? Can you transcribe the passage?
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Aug 17, 2022 16:09
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Sure, if you don't mind that I'm taking a break from having a brain so it's Stephen King's IT : [Skipping the rest of the paragraph ; the whole thing is literally 3 sentences.] "A gigantic surprise-quilt lay on the bed. On it she could see women drawing water, boys driving cattle, men building haystacks. A wonderful quilt." I'm vaguely familiar with the idea of "quilt that you don't know how it'll turn out", my grandmother used to make them but under a different name, so I thought it could be something like that... until I got to the description of a whole busy scene with multiple people in it ; it seems like it'd be pretty hard to get that kind of detail accidentally, unless you were working with some very, very strange swatches of cloth. It's not relevant to the rest of the scene, it doesn't get mentioned ever again. This is entirely just me being a weird word-nerd who can't handle not knowing what something means, so if I'm being annoying just let me know and I'll shut up. Just a general, kind of awkward "thanks" by the way.
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Aug 17, 2022 16:23
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I don't mind the derail at all but I am also a nerd and that would bug me too. From that passage, I would guess something like what I would maybe call an "I spy" quilt but I am not sure if it has another name. Something where you hide a lot of fun little images in the fabrics.
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Aug 17, 2022 16:46
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I would guess it’s a southern tradition that he’s seen in his family/a guest house. Each woman sends in a block and the outcome is a surprise quilt rather than the planned whole object they usually are.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:01
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Oh wait this is Steven King, you can legit email him/Twitter @ him and ask, his wife will usually reply to fan questions and she’s his right arm/proofreader/editor.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:05
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learnincurve posted:Oh wait this is Steven King, you can legit email him/Twitter @ him and ask, his wife will usually reply to fan questions and she’s his right arm/proofreader/editor. Genius! I just did. Hopefully someone with authority responds. We'll see if he actually remembers. Supposedly that book should really have cocaine listed as a co-author, which considering I'm 600 pages in and not halfway, kind of fits. Thanks a mill.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:42
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Hey thread, can you guys help a goon troubleshoot some issues? I've got a Singer Merritt 8834 that I inherited from a guy who used to go to the local makerspace I go to. I've used it to sew a few bits of nylon webbing for a project I'm working on, and I'm running into two issues with it. The first is that I see the thread bunching up horribly on the underside of the material as I sew. Googling around has lead me to believe this is due to a bobbin tension issue, probably? I'm looking at correcting that as I type this. The main reason I'm here though, that my googling is failing me on, is that if I turn the arm shaft belt drive pulley, the big knob on the side of the machine opposite the needle, backwards slash clockwise, I'll hear a sound that sounds like scissors closing as the needle moves into and out of the needle plate. If the needle is threaded, then more often than not, that thread will be cut as I do this. I've gathered that it's the needle scraping something under the plate, but I'm not sure what to do to correct that. Any advice there? Is it something I can check the alignment of, or maybe I need a new needle? I dunno here.
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Sep 11, 2022 17:59
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So webbing is something I'd consider pretty heavy duty, especially when you get beyond two layers. And here's some discussion about that machine from an ancient forum: https://www.quiltingboard.com/vintage-antique-machine-enthusiasts-f22/singer-merritt-8834-a-t228666.html Quilting Arcana posted:Merritts have plastic parts and gears and aren't very highly regarded. The plastic parts in the bottom of the machine can and do literally disintegrate. The 237 is a better model. You might be about to get the tension right and get it to work. You might destroy critical parts of your machine in the process.
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Sep 11, 2022 18:33
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I was looking to get a new machine for light duty and craft use and the Singer 9960 seemed to fit the bill pretty nicely. Are there other machines/manufacturers in the $450 range which I should consider as well? I considered getting a used machine for a while but yeesh online marketplaces are just a never ending parade of the flakiest people on the planet.
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Sep 11, 2022 18:54
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Lead out in cuffs posted:So webbing is something I'd consider pretty heavy duty, especially when you get beyond two layers. Huh. Well, for the low, low price of "free", I guess I can't complain. In the forward direction, it works perfectly fine, outside of the bunching. It's just in reverse that it does the grinding sound and cutting of the thread. I guess I'll attempt to be extra careful, and see what I can puzzle out about the issue then. Turning that drive pulley in the counter-clockwise slash forward direction, with no thread or material, it does seem to move kind of sluggishly, and is a bit difficult to turn. Looking at that thread, I'd bet it needs new oil, which won't be an issue. Nothing feels or sounds rough in a way that would indicate any, like, broken gear teeth or similar. My main issue right now is that I want to try and get into the guts of the stuff under the needle plate, to try and find out what the grinding noise is, but I'm a bit nervous to do so for fear of accidentally loving up some alignment or something and wrecking the mechanism.  EDIT: On moving some of the moveable plastic bits around the base, there's a sticky note, saying "cleaned, oiled, adjusted. Use light upper tension." dated 7/27/2014. How often should these things be oiled? I've used it twice now to sew velcro hook and loop to a single layer of nylon web at a time, and I'm unsure of how much it was used prior to that.
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Sep 11, 2022 19:01
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Xiahou Dun posted:
The description of the workers sounds like French toile with pastoral scenes.  Do we think King knows the different between a patchwork quilt and a whole cloth coverlet of some kind? Anyway, if I remember I'll ask my quilting buddies at sewing class tomorrow. They're all in their 60s and 70s, so King's age.
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Sep 11, 2022 20:37
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Shifty Pony posted:I was looking to get a new machine for light duty and craft use and the Singer 9960 seemed to fit the bill pretty nicely. Are there other machines/manufacturers in the $450 range which I should consider as well? I have this exact machine, the one single issue it has is with when you use a really big reel of thread and it’s full, then you have to angle it at 45 degrees or it has to keep making you stop so it can figure out the auto tension. Other than that it’s an absolute dream. Before they started selling them in the U.K. I imported mine from Walmart to singer Switzerland and had a U.K. power supply fitted and I wouldn’t swap it for any other machine if you paid me. It’s worth investing in the official singer walking foot for it as it just *works* much better than the cheap generic ones I was using before.
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Sep 12, 2022 11:38
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learnincurve posted:I have this exact machine, the one single issue it has is with when you use a really big reel of thread and it’s full, then you have to angle it at 45 degrees or it has to keep making you stop so it can figure out the auto tension. That's good to hear. I decided to go ahead with it. Sewing a relatively simple carrot costume last year was a pain in the butt on my old machine, this year's kangaroo is more complex so it will be nice to have some extra features and more reliability.
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Sep 12, 2022 17:37
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I could enthuse about this machine all day and am about to; it’s got every single one of singer’s best features all in one - the auto tension shift when going over bumps is unnoticeable, it’s cutting feature is something you never knew you lacked, but more importantly it has the modern features and computer stuff with the older models much better cast iron head and chunky bobbin mechanism - If you take off the case it’s all metal under there so can handle more layers than you would expect. It goes fast, because, all metal, it could have been made to go faster, but they wanted to make sure the auto tension could keep up. So if you are doing one straight seam it just punches down and gives the crisp line of the very old black all cast iron machines which morphed into the industrial machines of today can do.
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Sep 12, 2022 18:55
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Yeah I was curious and Googled it, and came up with this YouTube video of a repair guy tearing it down and then stress testing it. It happily stitched through three layers of leather that looked about 1/8" thick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTdEAp7fgjE&t=1497s Seems pretty solid and full of features.
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Sep 12, 2022 22:59
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:The description of the workers sounds like French toile with pastoral scenes. He never responded to me (shocking surprise!), so I don't have his word on it, but I'm beginning to think that bit might have been the cocaine talking and he used the wrong piece of blanket vocabulary. But if you remember to ask and it's not a bother, I'd love to hear the response from anyone in your class just cause knowing things is cool and makes me happy. "It was probably a mistake but who knows" isn't a very satisfying answer, you know? Also I just knew toile as like the actual French word, not as a thing and that looks cool as hell. It's almost like a little cloth woodcut! I'm gonna see if I can get one of my favorite Albrecht Duerer prints as some kind of throw/coverlet deal, because that would be an awesome (if aggressive) decorating choice for my place. Thanks again to everyone who responded and helped ; I didn't say anything earlier just because it's weird to report a complete lack of development, not because of a lack of appreciation.
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Sep 12, 2022 23:16
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Xiahou Dun posted:He never responded to me (shocking surprise!), so I don't have his word on it, but I'm beginning to think that bit might have been the cocaine talking and he used the wrong piece of blanket vocabulary. But if you remember to ask and it's not a bother, I'd love to hear the response from anyone in your class just cause knowing things is cool and makes me happy. "It was probably a mistake but who knows" isn't a very satisfying answer, you know? I believe SpoonFlower does bedding now, and 500-year-old art is well out of copyright, so yeah, go hog wild. https://www.spoonflower.com/en/home-decor/bedding/duvet-cover
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Sep 13, 2022 00:39
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I believe SpoonFlower does bedding now, and 500-year-old art is well out of copyright, so yeah, go hog wild. Yessssssss I could get the entirety of Durer's illustrated Book of Revelations. Then I would have a ridiculous and amazing bed set that only I would ever like. Thanks a mill. I'm gonna spend a chunk of the rest of night formatting different versions of The Four Horsemen and St. Michael Defeating the Dragon.
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Sep 13, 2022 01:21
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Yeah I was curious and Googled it, and came up with this YouTube video of a repair guy tearing it down and then stress testing it. It happily stitched through three layers of leather that looked about 1/8" thick. I watched that as well. Very impressive. Seems to have a tendency to deviate from a straight stitch and zigzag a tiny bit when going full speed through multiple layers of heavy fabric like denim, but at that price point what wouldn't other than a straight stitch only machine?
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Sep 13, 2022 02:18
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I completely forgot to ask about the surprise quilt at sewing class, but if you want some fun toile, check out Timorous Beasties--they have urban theme toiles, like the New York that features people selling crack and getting arrested. As for me, I was well acquainted with toile at an early age because my grandmother LOVED it and had multiple toile rooms in her house.  Missing the duvet, but that's the same toile as bedding, upholstery, wallpaper, curtains, and lampshades.  My bedroom when I stayed there. TOILE
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Sep 13, 2022 13:00
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Shifty Pony posted:I watched that as well. Very impressive. TBH my tank of a 1920s cast-iron Singer straight stitch machine does this to some degree too. I think it might actually be from the needle flexing rather than anything to do with the machine itself.
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Sep 14, 2022 01:18
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I have found that the auto threader only works with singer branded needles no matter if people in haberdashery shops have “never heard of this before” or not. It clearly needs no deviation in eyehole height for it to work and off brand never get it right
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Sep 14, 2022 08:00
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Does anyone have recommendations on outdoor fabric brand? It’s for furniture on a covered, but not screened, porch. I read about Sunbrella but it’s expensive and may be overkill
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Sep 22, 2022 14:19
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Upgrade posted:Does anyone have recommendations on outdoor fabric brand? It’s for furniture on a covered, but not screened, porch. I read about Sunbrella but it’s expensive and may be overkill If you live near a Joann fabrics it looks like their store brand Solarium fabric is on sale. My mom covered some outdoor lounge chair cushions with that stuff 5 years ago and they're still looking pretty good.
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Sep 23, 2022 00:20
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Ziggy Smalls posted:If you live near a Joann fabrics it looks like their store brand Solarium fabric is on sale. My mom covered some outdoor lounge chair cushions with that stuff 5 years ago and they're still looking pretty good. I made some shopping bags out of Solarium a decade ago and they look almost new despite constant use. That stuff is seriously tough.
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Sep 23, 2022 02:22
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Is there a quick and dirty way to repair the elbows on a cotton hoodie? I could probably sew them shut but I'm not very good at it and only have a little repair kit available. Both elbows wore through and then tore right across the back of the elbow, like the knees of ripped jeans.
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Sep 27, 2022 20:35
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