Today: Getting familiar with the sewing machine - again (first time was months ago). Cutting the first fabric.
Getting feet wet meant leaving the comfort zone of the shop, and setting up in the new "sewing room", downstairs in the laundry.
This unfinished room in the basement was originally finished as a bedroom by the previous owner. At that time, the laundry - on the other side of the wall - was shared with the water utility room, and it was cramped and spidery and had to be accessed through a 3/4 bath. Laundry room accessible only through the bathroom! Weird. We moved the laundry onto the opposite side of the same wall, bringing it out of the dark, and into the bedroom, making it a large laundry room - AND DW's sewing room.
Eventually as kids moved away, we brought DW upstairs, setting up her sewing room on the main floor, in another bedroom. So when we picked up this new machine, with its own larger footprint, we put it down here in the old sewing/laundry room.
We found the government issued gray tables (one table, and one credenza) recently at a second-hand store - for cheap - and snapped them up. When we first married, I had a job as the foreman for a paint crew that re-painted these sorts of government office furniture pieces "on-site" at various military and federal government offices in northern Utah. So I was intimately familiar with their build quality - which was high. We also have a two-section glass door bookcase - repainted, and used quite attractively in our living room.
The machine table came with the machine, but I re-worked it. For one thing, I went through it with the paperwork and cleaned and oiled and checked adjustments as described by the manual (online - most helpful was a military maintenance manual).
This photo was more recent, after the current oiling. There must be 30 or so points to oil on this machine regularly!
A number of the holes you see in the body of the machine are places to put a drop or two of oil.
Front and back, and underneath, and behind doors. Johnny, show us what's behind Door #1!
Yup. 8-10 places in here. Okay, maybe 6 or 7. But some machines, like the Japanese copy of the Singer - called a Consew - have a little red paint at each place. Not on this baby. You have to have recollection, an instruction book, or routine familiarity - to remember where all the oiling points are.
I also set the adjustable table height, and the foot pedal, etc., to my body size, and replaced the larger pulley on the motor with a smaller pulley, to slow the machine down.
New belt to fit.
Check out the needle threading. Up top - in from the back, over and in through the side. In front, down, back up, down again. Over to the tension-er discs and spring.
It's THAT knurled nut adjuster, that gives the needle thread tension. That's important - I learned. In essence, it keeps the lock of each stitch (needle thread hooked around the bobbin thread) in the middle of the fabric, or project thickness. If the "stitch lock" position is too far to the bottom of the project (bobbin side) the needle tension is too loose, because it allows more needle thread into the stitch, than bobbin thread. So you tighten the tension slightly, and try again.
Like this. Note on this photo, the top surface, or the needle thread side, the stitch looks awesome!
But on the downward side, or the bobbin thread surface, the needle thread is coming out onto the surface and is seen as a small point at each stitch (mostly only visible in this photo at a few spots toward the middle-right). That means the needle thread tension is too loose.
And of course, if that visual stitch problem is on the top surface - the needle side - then the needle tension is too tight, and should be loosened to get the stitch lock position more into the middle of the project thickness. Any seamstress/seamster probably gets to where it's second nature to adjust on the fly - as they fly. Me? Way slower process. But I used some scrap and got fair enough to start.
After the needle thread tensioner, the threading continues down around another disc/spring thing, that helps control the thread as the needle mechanics go up and down. It continues up and down through the various guides and the lever and such, eventually through the needle eye. Lots of correct threading here, and I have to refer to the instructions each time. That should get less as I get better.
Here's a close-up of the needle, and the walking foot. Walking foot means the foot and the dog (the jagged looking middle piece), move together to pull the project through the machine, so you don't feed it, you let it move the project.
It pulls. You just need to keep things aligned. Like when we learned to drive and Dad said, "keep it between the lines". And we drove at about 5 mph. It was tough! But after we got a little "seat-time", we could increase the speed - and look at us all today! Pulling big loads and stuff down the high-speed highways!
That's how this machine feels to me - 5 mph. But even after slowing it down - reducing it's speed with the pulley change - it is really fast. And jackrabbit starts? Don't get me started!
Here's the bobbin mechanism with the plate pulled back.
And see that "scribed line" on the plate? When the plate is back in position, that line represents 1/2" from the needle. So I'm using 1/2" seam allowance on all seams, so that I can align fabric edges to that line.
After cutting out the first piece of fabric, I had some scrap, so starting practicing stitches, setting tension, various stitch lengths and running short straight seams. I think I settled on 8 - maybe 7 - stitches per inch, which of course would be about 1/8" stitches.
And I was able to feather my foot-pedal pressure to be "reasonable" - especially when using your hand on the wheel for short and slow assistance - but there's a "feel" that will only come with time and practice. Yes - variable speed.
This picture shows how I got a straight seam at first, and then when it came to the end (fingers close to the needle area) the machine whipped it out of my control, and ran off to the side! I equate it to a golf swing slice.
There's no reverse on this machine. The beginning or ending "lock" of a seam is usually accomplished by a short reverse, but is done on this machine in a couple of different ways. Normally, this unit is for lots of straight, fast seaming of thicker, lengthy projects, locked later when a cross seam is made over the first seam. However, there are ways to lock the beginning and end of a seam on here, by raising the foot and re-stitching over a couple of stitches, or by turning the project 180 degrees, etc.
Alright, let's cut my fabric.
This "fold mark crease", where the fabric width was folded in half to roll it onto the bolt, had set up a bit-o-memory, so I laid out the piece in such a way as to avoid having the crease in the project surface.
I marked with a ball-point pen and used the sheet-rock tee, along with my normal tape measure.
After cutting the fabric piece, I used it as a pattern for the Thermolam. Up to this point, I was just using scissors.
So that gave me a large section of "flat", with fold-over tabs on all four sides, like a modified "cross". It's those corner cutouts that will be seamed together to create a sort of large shallow "box" with no bottom. That box goes over the thin foam padding, and fastens to the back of the plywood "bottom". We'll do that maybe tomorrow.
