Silver Case

One of the projects I finished this weekend was a random carrying bag I made on impulse when I was inspired by a piece of red felt scrap a few weeks ago. I wound up with a roughly A4-sized cordura bag embroidered with felt and thick cotton-lined, closed with a lapped zipper and a red webbing handle. Worksmanship is not perfect, but the zipper application and general stitching was cleaner than previous projects.

It is still the dark of night.

I built a custom-sized Forward Air Controller messenger bag this month.

I’m nearly finished my latest messenger bag, but in the meantime, I wanted to work on a different project. I have an idea for a jacket, but before I attempt a pattern like that, I figured I ought to find a substantially simpler pattern, to give me the basic idea of using a pattern.

So I bought a Simplicity brand pattern for a (simple) tee shirt. I bought some maroon jersey fabric and went to work. Five hours later I had a $23 vaguely-ill-fitting t-shirt with numerous QC blemishes.

I made one major mistake, and that was tracing out the wrong size-line on the front neck piece. Consequently the head-hole is way too deep in the front. So I had to screw around and make a different neck/collar ribbing to fit. It doesn’t lay very nice, and the hole is too big for my taste.

Design/pattern problems I noted? The sleeves, although they compiled nicely, aren’t really the right sizes. The arm pit holes are a bit on the snug side, and the sleeves are too short by 1.5 inches before I even hem them. The shirt’s overall length was way too long. I sheared off 4-5″ before I even started, and this was about right. These are all things I supposedly could fix. I am thinking to turn the paper pattern into a muslin pattern and fine tune it to my liking. (a lot of fucking work). Why didn’t they say use ribbing for the collar? I’d prefer that to fabric, I think.

How do I avoid accidentally puckering bits on collars?

Knit jersey material is really annoying to work with. I hate the way it rolls under itself.

I need to get a double needle. That was frequently called for to finish off seams and stitches.

Woei’s Christmas present is a custom-sized pouch to hold the Playstation Portable PSP his stewardess girlfriend gave him.

I made it out of 400denier Cordura in a MARPAT pattern. The inner lining is made from a 1951 aviator’s escape-and-evasion silk map.

The purple zipper is a little highlight to remind you of the blue led’s favored by the sony PSP.

Lessons learned? Is there some sort of glue that I can seal the edge of silk with? It wants to unravel at all costs. This map is not pure silk. When I burn it, it leaves some plastic turd-blob.

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UPDATE: I have a rolled or double hemmer foot in my collection. It feeds in the fabric, does a double roll, and sews it into a flat, neat hem. I tried it once, in the store, and it was a disaster. The machine was too fast, I didn’t feed it properly, and it was a joke. The lady demoed it effortlessly. But I checked tonight and found some online instructions. After a couple tries on the very fine, weak silk evasion maps, I know have the basic idea of it, and can do a passable job. Another couple meters of it, and I’ll be fine. So what this means is I can put a strong, tidy hem into my pieces of silk, which means no more ravelling, and no need to glue or do anything else obscene. wheee!

I made my first lined pouch today. It turned into Tien Lee’s Christmas present. Not really sure what she’ll keep in it, as it’s roughly the dimension of a 6-stick pack of White Owls.

Now that I have a lined pouch and a zipper under my belt, I’m going to do something a bit more subtle, using some of my silk evasion maps as a liner.

My Singer u20 Professional arrived today, tuned and accessorized. I even got an english manual.

After ripping through some canvas duck, I pulled out some of the hunks of leather I’d bought in Tokyo. Sure enough, with a proper leather needle, I sewed through quarter-inch leather with no problems. I need to get a better selection of leather needles, though. My machine takes commercial (round shank) needles. Although I can install home-use needles, they are not strong enough. My machine snapped one of the home use needles. I need to get some 16-20 shank leather commercial sewing needles before I can do much.

After playing with leather, I wanted to work on applique using the kimono fabric I’d bought in Tokyo and some of the 800d cordura fabric I’d bought in Singapore. Accidentally, my embroidery thread color matched the kimono.

As a second attempt, it worked out really well. The poorer sections of the stitching here was because I hadn’t threaded the bobbin correctly. After I got that resolved, it worked perfectly. This machine has a knee-operated lever to lift the presser foot. This turns out to be terrific for sewing the curves in applique. A small lift makes it easier to smoothly turn the piece.

Now I need to go make something proper I guess.

Last I checked, I was going to get a Yamato DP-1111 Industrial Sewing machine. I went by the shop today to check it out, and they showed me another model, a Singer Professional 20u. They actually recommended I take the Singer instead. It has the same functionality (straight and zig-zag) as the Yamato, almost the same power, and parts (including speciality feet) are much, much easier to get hold over. As an added bonus, it cost $750 as opposed to the $1000 Yamato.

I tried it out and it tore though many layers of my toughest fabrics, so I have no concern about its power. I did long seams of applique run, and the stitching was uniform. It was manufactured in Japan, unlike modern Singers, so it has the same build quality as the Yamato. I think I will be able to get a manual for it as well.

They’re going to deliver it to me next Thursday, a public holiday (Hari Raya Haji), the day after I get back from five days in Tokyo. Wheeee can’t wait.

About five years ago I had a brilliant idea for a Christmas gift for Ling, an expensive, fine Janome sewing machine. Boy that went over really well. It sat in a closet forever, labelled ‘The White Elephant’ by Ling and never touched.

Dad used it once to repair some luggage. Recently I got it out to make some messenger bags. It works well, to a point, until I start taking on heavy layers of tough material. It’s really better suited to making clothes, not munitions. I ‘need’ a stronger sewing machine.

Ling did some research with her mom’s seamstress friend and found a sewing machine store that specializes in new and used industrial sewing machines. So as a suprise today, she took me to the store to let me pick out my Christmas present, an industrial sewing machine!

These things are no toys. Rather than some puny electric motor in the sewing machine, these sit on a dedicated table with a massive 0.5-1hp electric motor mounted below. Rather than the foot pedal controlling power to the motor, it is a mechanical linkage that engages a clutch linkage between motor and machine. And when I say clutch, it’s just like learning to drive a 1967 GTO. Total tire burnout. A home sewing machine, at top speed, might do 600 stitches per minute. These things do more like 2500-3000 stitches per minute. They sound like a vulcan chain gun.

An example of electric clutch sewing machine motor. Not for my unit, but similar.

I brought along a bunch of ‘difficult’ fabric and webbing. This thing chewed through it like a total joke. No problem at all.

I tested my stitching out on a Brother machine. But it only did straight stitches. I need one that can do zig-zag so that I can do embroidery and bar-tacks. So she pointed me at a Japanese Yamato DP-1111. This has those features, and against the odds, is even more powerful than the Brother I tested out. Demented.

Yamato DP-1111

So they’re going to setup this sewing machine on a proper seamstress table (even has built in meter stick on the table) and tune it up. I asked them to take pity on me and significantly gear-down the motor. It’s just too fast to use for my purposes. This should be trivial to switch out some pulley ratios.

Once it’s setup, I’ll go over during the week and test it out. Unfortunately I can’t find much at all about this machine online, let alone a manual. I’ll have to give a shot at contacting Yamato Sewing Machines directly and begging them for one.

I tried out some appliqué techniques today.

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The blue fabric, even though I ironed on some backing, was still too lightweight to take the applique, and puckered. I had the thread tension very low already, so I don’ tthink there was much I could do. I did some other applique on a piece of canvas, and there was, no surprise, no pucker.

I still don’t center the needle perfectly at the edge of the appliqué, so the coverage isn’t always great. Of course, I’m also battling impatience… there is always an urge to fire off a lot of stitches before stopping and rotating the fabric.

One annoying thing about my sewing machine is that it is very hard to iterate the movements of the pedal. I will want, for example to do exactly three forward stitches, and for the needle to stop on the left. It’s hard to do just three stitches, let alone stop on the correct side. Would be nice if there was some sort of pulse feed control I could use to toggle through the process. I would assume there are machines optimized for appliqué, alas this doesn’t seem to be one.