Sewing and DIY fashion

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RobertKerans: Aug 25, 2006; There is a heppy lend
Fur, fur aw-a-a-ay.

Muffy_the_Diver posted:

Anyhow, the main point of my post is to see if any of y'alls have any suggestions as to why my machine's straight-stitch keeps loving up!

It's a Babylock EA-605, built like a little brick shithouse and in near pristine condition. I managed to get it with the instruction manual, and set it up, oiled it, adjusted tension, everything according to the manual. It does both overlocking as well as some fancy-assed form of straight stitch that I'm not really familiar with; Double-Chain stitching. As far as I can tell, it's a lot like overlock in terms of the movement of the needle, only, you know, doesn't overlock.

Now, the overlocking works just fine and peachy (kept missing stitches but I adjusted some things and now it's great). My problem is this - When I use the double-chain setup and stitch through rather thin fabric (two layers of lovely-threadcount bedsheets), it will get would up around the underside-thread-feeder (I've no idea what the thing is called, so here's a photo):

The yellow dotted line is the thread path, the pink loops at the end of it are what happens with the thread passing through the needle after a few stitches. It gets bundled around, then the needle's thread snaps, and all sorts of hell break loose. I've tried different speeds, different tensions, all sorts of stuff but nothing seems to help.

The kicker? It only started this maybe a week ago, with no prior modifications to tension or any other settings. Suggestions?

It's the tension, and the weight of fabric together. You might be able to get around this by keeping the material very taught, but that might be a pain.

You should only be using the chain stitch for embroidery, though, it unravels too easily if used for basic stitching. Use either a basic sewing maching, or overlock fully.
EDIT: the overlocker has chain stitch as an option because it works normally by running a line of it alongside the loop stitches finishing the edges off. It's a fairly pointless addition to have it as an option on its oown, thogh I suppose it could be used for repairing bits of overlocking, and for decorative edging. Used to be the default stitch on basic machines until they invented ones that didn't unravel straightaway.

Also, in addition to the other replies,

Gonktastic posted:

Wonderful, thanks!

Anybody have suggestions for replacing coat buttons. I bought a trench coat and a wool coat for the winter and both of them have already lost a button. I noticed that they're pretty different than regular button sewing- looser and not as close to the actual fabric. I'd prefer not to go to a tailor...

Especially with the wool coat, using a small button on the inside will hold it on for much longer. So you essentially stitch two buttons together, one on each side of the material.

RobertKerans fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jan 8, 2008

# ¿ Jan 8, 2008 14:32

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RobertKerans: Aug 25, 2006; There is a heppy lend
Fur, fur aw-a-a-ay.

bobua posted:

What kind of skill level would be required to make something like fitted t-shirts?

Not that I understand anything about sewing, but I'm especially bewildered by the way a single piece of fabric seems to be 'shaped' to a form. If I was to cut a t-shirt up at the seems, the individual pieces wouldn't be naturally flat(I don't think).

Not high at all BUT to do it and make it look halfway decent you need an overlocker and a blind stitch machine. Then it's as simple as getting a pattern/taking apart a tee shirt and drawing around the bits, cutting out a pair of each of the 2 [very simple] shapes, and running the seams through the overlocker, and the hem, neck, and cuffs through the blind stitch machine. Like nuclear power, it's the startup cost that's a bitch though.

If you cut up a tee shirt, you'll see all the pieces are flat. Material is flat, you mould it with seams and darts on on some material, but on tee-shirts there should be no need for that. The shape should come from the side seams being curved.

RobertKerans fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Jan 8, 2008

# ¿ Jan 8, 2008 14:50

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