Bills New Machine

[Bill]

I agree ... and boy am I envious of the Barbieernina wardrobe ...

@Bill If you kill damage THIS one ... we WILL be after you ... You HAVE been warned!!! 

Relax woman! There was only that stupid atelier that brought out the screwdrivers. Bernie is safe. Trust me on this 

[Iminei]

Stupid Atelier ???

Did I really see you had written that ??

You and me @Bill  are going to fall out if youre not careful! 

[Diane]

@Bill WHY on earth are you sewing 18 layers of denim fabric, this is not the way to go, you'll end up breaking it if you're not careful 

[Bill]

@Iminei 

I do the same test with every machine @Diane
Obviously I don't jump straight in at the deep end and just lump 18 layers at them, but 1 layer at a time to see what they're capable of. When the juddering starts I stop. Bernina themselves claimed the machine could go through 10mm of fabric. This way, I don't have any excuse for trying to sew something which breaks a needle or a part. The Bernettes first job was to sew a twin line of stitches on my cargo shorts and the needle broke pretty much straight away, after Burt juddered quite viciously. Haven't done that again!

[Ploshkin]

One issue going through multi layers is that the machine itself may have the oomph to do it but the needle is the weak link.  It is quite likely to flex / bend on the way through.  If I've got a challenging thick bit I always use the handwheel to lower the needle, you can usually see if it is starting to bend. 

[Bill]

I'll have to check that actually. I discovered afterwards that it did that with an 80 needle 

[Hideout Hen]

Great set up you have there. Have fun. 

[LeilaMay]

You may get skipped stitches when you've got a lot of layers - the needle can no longer drop so far down, and fails to connect with the lower thread. So that is a constraint that cannot be worked around.

Enjoy the machine

[Kad]

@Bill WHY on earth are you sewing 18 layers of denim fabric, this is not the way to go, you'll end up breaking it if you're not careful 

I'm not sure that there's a machine yet made that would be able to meet, and beat, the challenge that is Bill

[Ohsewsimple]

There really is no need to sew all those layers of denim.  You’re never going to need to!
They may claim it will go through 10mm of fabric.  But 10mm of what? 10mm of silk, fine cotton, wool?  They are all different.  Trying this will just put the timing out and cost a fortune to fix.  Domestic machines are not designed for this. 

[Bill]

  @Kad

[Greybird]

@Bill a new sewing machine is not at all the same thing as a new bike. It doesn't need to be tested in the same way.

[Ouryve]

Quite, @Greybird
 By all means check that your machine can do what you have in mind for that project - I worked out that my current jeans project involves a max of 8 layers of denim and confirmed that I wouldn't hit problems with my machine and needle choice. In this case, Jane, by no means a flash machine with heaps of "muscle", could be coaxed through, nice and slowly, without scaring me.

[Bill]

Yebbut I betcha no one knew what a singer 201k was capable of till some plonkerbrave soul  tried it 

[HenriettaMaria]

If you make a pair of jeans and want to stitch the belt carriers on, you will have:

* two layers plus interfacing for the waistband
* four layers of the belt carrier where the raw edges are turned in before each side of the carrier is top/edge stitched
* another four layers of the belt carrier where you turn the end over before attaching it to the top edge of the waist band.

That makes ten layers and my old Singer 522 struggled with that much fabric.  If Bernie can handle ten layers without complaining, I call that a win