lube

[Spicy Jack]

so i'm making my friend's super hero halloween costume. he is having me make him gloves, spats, and man panties. sadly this means I have to work with the 2 most dreaded materials in the world: spandex & pleather.

anyhow... I attempt to put the pleather through the machine - but the foot is too tight and the material is too sticky that the material won't feed though. I try several different things, and it just makes a birds nest of thread and a giant hole in the material.

Plan B: LUBE!

There is baby oil EVERYWHERE! But it worked ... and now my friend will smell baby soft and be a little oily.

er...if anyone has any better ideas, now would be a great time.

[drivinmissdaisy]

Pin some tissue paper on the area that you need to sew and it will not stick so much. Also, try a teflon foot, you can get it at any fabric store and it works great!

[Spicy Jack]

ooooo good one. i had to do that with the ironing so it wouldn't melt...i didn't even think to use it to sew the material too.

thank you.

[Coffee]

When I sew really thick stuff it doesn't want to feed either sometimes. I just manually pull it through from the back...sort of help the machine along.

[Spicy Jack]

i tried that, but it wouldn't go through smoothly and the stitching ended up all different lengths and a horrible mess. THIS MATERIAL SUCKS! The worst part is that the stitching is VERY visable cuz of the shiney pleather so I couldn't "fake it". I already told my friend that the inside will all be raw edges - if they can't see, I'm not gonna worry about it.

STUPIDPROJECT!

[trisherina]

You need a machine with a DC motor. But I guess that's not very helpful.

[Spicy Jack]

my machine is a "brother". It was cool when I got it - 15 years ago! *sheesh* It has for sure seen better days (its kinda fallin apart). Luckily, with a little creative cheating, it does get the job done Sorta. Kinda.

Time for a new machine and hopefully a serger I might even learn how to do things the right way with one of those!

[trisherina]

I swear, just make sure you get a DC motor for the next one, regardless of what you get (mine's a Brother PC3000). It adds a seemingly ridiculous amount to the price, but it makes that much difference in what you can do with the machine. RatMan bought mine for me so he didn't flinch, but I would have run screaming from the store. It's really helpful if you need to sew slowly (as I do, most of the time) but need the power to punch through say, several layers of fleece going round a corner. I have never missed having fancy embroidery (you know the kind, where you load the CD and it embosses away for you), but I would like to get a serger foot. That would rock.

[Spicy Jack]

OMG! That thing has like 10 different button holes! That is *cough* sew cool *cough*!

[daverbee]

I saw an article in a woodworking magazine once showing a woodturner who made his own lathe and powered it using a truck engine. Maybe you could make your own sewing machine with a lawn mower engine or something...
Not very helpful, I know, but I'm trying to keep myself awake. Posting here helps...

[Spicy Jack]

hmmmm...that is a great idea daver! A lawn mower engine *would* be ideal - imagine the POWER! .... and with my overwhelming expertise in engines I should be able to whip out a sewing machine in no time...

but we still have a few problems - what do we do about the gas smell, and how do I manage not to blow myself up?



I seem to be a bit accident prone. And by "a bit", I mean very. Losing fingers funs in the family.

[trisherina]

Yay! A fellow sewing nerd! Please post pics of your finished product. Here's a pic of a baby quilt I made for my friend who named her baby (in part, in part) after their cat. Quilting feet do come in handy, too.

[Frieda]

when and where and how did you guys all learn to sew?

[Spicy Jack]

oooOOOOOooooo... pretty! Quilts are fun- But I would never ever ever sew one by hand, that is just crazy, and requires patience.

My friend would not relinquish all of his old nasty t-shirts from concerts and sports teams and who knows what - so I cut them up and made him a giant quilt. Solved 2 problems really - he got to keep the nasty shirts and he needed blankets. Fun!

[trisherina]

Hey, now that's what I'm talking about. What a clever idea. Ratchild grows attached to items of clothing, too, hmmm.

Frieda: My mother sewed all her life, in fact had her first stroke while cutting out a pattern. I learned some very rudimentary basics (like how to slip stitch) in torturous junior high Home Ec, and learned a few things from watching my mom (like using tracing paper). Most of it, though, has been from buying patterns of increasing difficulty -- you start with those three hour ones and they take you three weeks -- and whatever I can't figure out, I can usually find a diagram for using Google. Places that sell sewing machines usually offer free courses, but that seemed unduly vigorous to me.