I've got a small project Im thinking of but sold my old Pfaff a while back and Im without a machine.

All Im doing is sewing something along the lines of a box shaped sand filled weight but it will be in heavier than normal material, probably up to something like cordura, havent decided yet. Ive seen the odd review of it doing a couple of layers of denim so Im hoping it might be up to the task.

Does anyone have experience using this with heavier material?

If it cant cope what would you recommend?

Id say budget is around £100 so Im not expecting miracles or longevity, its more a proof of concept to see if its viable.

Thanks

For once I'm thinking ahead. It's becoming a bit more obvious that the material I'm using is pushing the limits of my Pfaff 84 so I'm on the lookout for something that will chew through 4 odd layers of 1000d cordura, vinyl and all the other heavier fabrics I've got my eye on.

Budget isn't massive, say £200 or so and second hand. Had a look on eBay and there's a Pfaff 442 twin needle near me but I'm clueless as to whether that can use a single needle, just a double or both.

If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears!

So, this week I had a go at using vinyl to make a dust cover. I noticed a few things, such as I like doing the patterns on vinyl as its easier (to me), pencil, ruler, craft knife, slice away and nice clean edges. Its a lot harder to sew though due to the thickness, like everything its the good with the not so good. Anyway..

I loosely followed a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8pZlWZ4Ttc&t=409s but how he lay things out didnt seem to work so I just figure out my own way and ended up with a layout like this. I'll stick with it as it seemed to work OK.



The thing Im covering (Digitakt) is this, a square box shape with knobs on



And what I ended up with is this









The Good - I finished it, it came out roughly as I hoped and hasnt fallen apart as of yet

The Bad - The seams are all over the place, corners arent finished properly on the exterior and I cut a bit too close for one corner thats left a hole.

The Ugly - its not as sharp a square as I want.

Please feel free to pick apart the mistakes and where I could improve, I did treat this as an experiment so I have learnt a few things and what my limitations are at the mo. If you have any opinions on different types of material for this type of Id be interested to hear what else I could use.

Thread was Gutermann Polyester Sew All, straight stitch on 2, no idea how you refer to the thread weight/thickness it was all I had.

A week or so ago I bought a metre of cheap black fabric for practicing on, so now Ive got to make stuff with it. I wanted to make a dice bag for a friend but thought the material was a bit rough so thought Id make a bag for some headphones I bought and ended up with this.







The headphones fit in nicely but again, the materials a bit rough so its now a cable bag!

I decided to make a pattern from A4 paper to get the material cut the same size, Im used to having to cut two of the same things (like pieces of wood, metal etc) exactly the same and this caused a bit of an issue. I just lay the paper pattern over the material and cut it out, this led to two pieces sort of the same size but not exactly.

Am I worrying about being too precise or is there a better way? i.e drawing around the template then cutting after. any tips methods welcomed.

I nipped/clipped the seam allowance at the corners but they still arent as sharp and pointy as Id like.This is nothing more than me wanting to get it right for when I need/want to do something perfect.



 The drawstring I bought wouldnt fuse together with heat like polyester (?) does so Im annoyed at the fraying ends. Ive got to learn to add a bit onto my measurements as I didnt leave enough for the knot and a little over, its all a learning curve so I wont make the same mistake next time.

 Its obviously a beginner thing to make, but the satisfaction of thinking "I made that" is something I love. Next one will be from better material and lined as my headphones were a treat and pretty expensive (for me anyway)

I have lots of cables around that I usually keep tidy by using the cardboard bit of a loo roll. After someone mentioned that making a dust cover first might be a bit too ambitious, I searched for simple projects and this seemed perfect, so I bought the material, fusable interface and some Velcro.

The result







I know I’ve made a few mistakes such as leaving the shorter length open to turn it inside out (I was too busy thinking how great I was doing) so I had to finish the sewing all on the outside.

Also the corners on the other end are like this, rounded not pointed



How can I avoid this in the future?

I plan on making a few of these for practice and they’ll come in handy 

I'm looking for a machine that will sew thicker fabric, canvas, faux leather and padded fabric. As this is a test to see if I can do it on looking at second hand, budget max £150. I've had a few pointed out to me such as older Singers like the 201k.

I'm wondering what else may be worth a look. My eBay searches tend to show a lot of Jones machines that I can't find any info on or Janome New Home with just as little info.

What would be a decent machine for a beginner that can sew the thicker stuff?