Hello again.
It’s been a while since I posted so I thought I should give a little progress report...
There has been swearing. Not as much as my wife was expecting, but I must confess to a small amount of profanity from time to time.
I somehow seem to have spent several days online trying to work out just what I need and I have managed to acquire a small mountain of kit.
I have also spent quite a lot of time getting to know my singer 201. At first i couldn’t get the stitches to work - sometimes they looked great, and then thirty seconds later the machine jammed and I’d have to get the screwdriver out to remove yet another birds nest. I just could not work out what to do to set the machine up in a way that gave me enough faith in my ability to produce a semi decent stitch every time.
In the end I decided that there must be something wrong - nothing terminal for the machine but something that wasn’t right - so I decided a really good service was required. I took the thing apart, following several videos that I found on you tube, and during this process noticed that all of the machines they were playing with had the foot tension spring wound down way way tighter than it was on my machine. This solved my issue with odd length stitches.
I then gradually worked out that my other issue was caused by my cotton reel being too heavy for the spring to really cope with. I’m not sure if there is a proper way to move thread from a large reel onto a standard smaller reel, but I found that an electric drill on slow speed with the right size drill bit did the job nicely....
I then played with yet more off cuts of fabric until I was happy that things seemed to be working, although by this time I had run out of spare material and was cutting lengths of fabric to practice on.
Then it was time to make a start on the boat sofa. I had planned to start with canvas work because that is all pretty much flat and lots of straight lines to sew - which sounds better to learn on - but I changed my mind for the simple reason that I was told to do the sofa first by my wife. Well, not exactly ‘told’ but it was made quite clear that she would be a happier bunny if she was looking at a nice new sofa.....
The first effort was not good. I tried various things. More swearing was required.
The sofa is made up of about twenty sections, and the first cushion I covered took a mere five hours... but I have worked out how to do it. Now each piece is taking about and hour and a half to strip, pattern, sew and staple. My ‘pin method’ is probably wrong and I am probably making something simple much more complicated than it needs to be, but I think the results are good enough for what we need. [ You are not allowed to view attachments ] [ You are not allowed to view attachments ] [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
I’ve managed to complete the first six pieces I bought home, although I do want to re do the first piece I did because it’s not up to standard.
I’m sure that I’ll find more head scratching moments as I try to get the seat cushions covered, but so far I’m happy.
Thanks again to all of those who helped with advice and suggestions, and gave me the belief that this was a project I could look at doing myself!
Gavin