Donnez Moi Mon Chapeau

A while back I picked up a pith helmet. You might think this a strange thing to do, but I did so with good cause: the hat is designed very cleverly, using a rigid inner form (made of pith, unsurprisingly) covered in cloth, and uses a set of straps on the interior to suspend the outer shell away from the wearer's head, keeping the hot sun off while allowing a cool breeze to flow underneath.

This works wonderfully, unless by some twist of misfortune the glue on the inner lining were to fail, allowing the lining to collapse against the head of the wearer, blocking off the cooling airflow.

Turns out the glue they used isn't waterproof, despite the fact that this hat is specifically designed to be sweat in, and them even suggesting dipping the hat in water for further cooling effect. Indeed.

Well, we've got a problem, and now we've gotta fix it.

The pith material used for the inner structure is not entirely unlike leather, so I decided to use leather stitching techniques to pin the lining back into place.

The first step of this technique is to mark out the stitch line, to keep things nice and straight.

Then we use a leather stitching punch to pre-punch the stitch holes with a perfect, even spacing.

Looks perfect and even to me.

Then we can use a diamond awl to help clear any holes that might not have made it all the way through.

Peek-a-boo!

Then it's just a matter of saddle stitching my way up from the brim to the top.

Now I didn't notice it at the time, but while stitching here, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I hadn't managed to position the inner lining quite right. This was quite a difficult task, as the entire lining had become detached from the hat, and so I didn't really have any good points of reference to go by.

You can see some of the puckers here from where the fabric was getting pulled too far towards the brim.

But, blissfully unaware, I carried on.

I stitched up the side-rear seams.

Which are at least looking great from the outside.

But once I got to the front seams, I realized things had gone off the rails a little bit. The lining fabric was pulling way too tight, and I could see that the hole at the top of the lining wasn't quite lining up with the hole in the hat. So, I ended up pulling out the four seams on the rear and redoing them, making sure to get the fabric in a much better position this time, and then finished up the remaining seams on the front.

It may not be perfect on the inside, but it's at least much better.

And on the outside, things look pretty darn good.

And now finally I can donnez moi mon chapeau.

Robo-Sew

Recently I decided that while I enjoy sewing, I find the actual act of doing the sewing itself to be painfully tedious, even with the basic mechanized assistance of a sewing machine doing most of the work for me. Most is not enough. Therefore, I decided it was high time I invested in a completely automated CNC sewing experience, where I need not trouble myself with actually engaging with the hobby on a personal level at all.

So it was just my luck that I found this Brother PE800 computerized embroidery machine sitting on eBay, selling for well below its usual market value. "It's jamming, selling as-is for parts only" the description said. Well, we'll see about that.

So with that taken care of, I tried stitching a second pattern and yeah.

It really does work just fine.

Hanging By A Thread

So I recently came into possession of a few spools of thread.

And by "a few" I mean quite a lot.

80 spools, to be precise, in 78 colours (there's a duplicate of black and white, for what should be obvious reasons).

While the cardboard box the thread came in makes for some very compact storage, it does make it rather difficult to find the colours I'm looking for, considering that half of the spools need to be upside-down in order to fit.

Luckily, science has invented a solution to this problem.

These racks hold 60 spools each, for a total of 120, which leaves me with a little bit of breathing room. They can stand on their own, but I have a lot of wall space in this room so I decided to hang them up.

I measured carefully, installed some picture hanger hooks, and...

Hmm, well, slightly wonky construction aside, I probably should have checked how much clearance I'd need between the two racks.

Unfortunately one of the hooks had managed to hit a stud, so it didn't come out without a bit of a fight.

I suppose I'll have to dab a little touch-up paint on that.

But anyway, that's a problem for future-me. Right now it's time to get the thread spools loaded up.

I'd used a few of these colours already, and in doing so had removed the plastic wrap and slipped on some thread nets (these keep the thread from unspooling in an uncontrolled manner and becoming tangled). But that meant that the unwrapped spools didn't match well with the shrink wrapped ones.

So a lot of unwrapping later, they now all match each other. Except for the spare black and white spools, since I want to keep track of which of those I haven't used yet.

Now I just have to deal with this static-charged nightmare.

And yes, those are some pieces of shrink wrap plastic stuck to the wall. Static electricity is a vexing foe indeed.

Stick A Cork In It

So the cork pad on the treadle of my LS-321 was looking a little second hand.

Apparently whoever decided this treadle needed a new coat of paint also decided that they didn't need to remove the cork first to replace it with a new piece.

Also there's a bunch of glitter stuck to the exposed adhesive.

Yeah, it's time for new cork.

Thankfully, these cork pads are universal and quite cheap, but first we need to deal with the old one.

And where there's a will, there's a way.

Apparently this treadle used to be a somewhat darker shade of grey. Duly noted. Also thankfully the adhesive residue turned out to be alcohol-soluble, so I didn't need to mess around with the acetone this time.

And with the new cork in place, things are looking much better indeed.

Dropping My Drawers

It is a well known fact (well, occasionally not so well known) that every sewing table has a drawer in it. My industrial sewing machine is no different, as we can see.

Where is the drawer? It's out there, somewhere, living its best life.

Anyway, since I need a drawer I can actually use, I ordered one up.

So let's get the old drawer slide bracket out of the way and install this new one.

And if you were wondering if it was covered in glitter, the answer is yes, yes it is.

So with that removed, it's time to install the new slides. The easiest way to do this is to start by installing one side, making sure to set it back from the front edge of the table by the appropriate amount so that the drawer doesn't stick out when it's closed but still opens far enough to be useful.

Then put the drawer in place and use it to space out the second drawer slide.

And that is one successfully installed sewing machine table drawer.

All that's left to do is fill it with machine-specific bits and bobs like presser feet and needles and spare bobbins.

And that's another job crossed off the list. I do intend to eventually replace this table top, but I can move this drawer to the new top whenever that day comes.

It's That Time Again

So I was goofing around with my new sewing machine a little, playing with the tension, and it seemed a bit peculiar to me that even backing the tension way off resulted in the thread being held back with a fair bit of force. It occurred to me that, over its lifetime, the machine may have gotten a bit of wear and gunk build-up on the tension discs, and so I pulled off one set to have a look.

Well, not only is there glitter there, because of course there's glitter there, but there's also even a bit of rust, or something very rust-like.

Thankfully, I have just the solution for this type of problem.

A bit of metal polish cleans things up right quick.

But this is only the secondary set of tension discs, which holds back the thread when the presser foot is up (raising the presser foot removes the preload from the main tension discs, and without at least some tension the thread could tangle). So how do the main tension discs look?

Glittery. Of course.

But with a bit more polishing they cleaned up just fine.

The tension seems a little better now, but we'll see how things go when I do some proper sewing.

Moving right along, a package finally came in with some new presser feet. I held off on ordering these ones until the straight stitch foot came in, so that I could make sure that I had found the right type. I had, so I bought a reasonable set of accessory feet.

We've got a left and right zipper foot, plus a cording/welting foot. The latter has a groove cut in the bottom to help align welt cord while you sew.

They come in different sizes for different size welt cords, which I hadn't noticed until after I ordered, but luckily the size I ended up with, 1/8th of an inch, will work perfectly for sewing welt cord around the seams of small bags. I'll probably pick up a larger one later if I feel the need to do upholstery work (5/32 of an inch is the most popular size for that).

However, before we get ahead of ourselves, there's a slight problem to deal with.

That would be the needle hitting the front of the welt cord foot. This being a needle-feed machine, the needle bar swings back and forth in time with the feed dogs to ensure a consistent, even feeding of the fabric as you sew, and so an elongated hole is required in the presser foot to accommodate this.

Here we can see the needle as it comes up on the upstroke, much further back in the slot of the presser foot.

But obviously not as far back as it ought to be.

Was the welting foot manufactured incorrectly? Or designed for a different machine? Well, let's see how the zipper feet look.

Yeah, the needle is still too far forward. We can also see on the upstroke that things just aren't where they should be.

Now when I'd done the machine timing previously, I had observed that the needle was reasonably well timed with the feed dog (the needle passes through a small hole in the feed dog when it makes the stitch, so the two have to move in sync). Seeing that, I had assumed that they were correctly adjusted, but now I was not so sure.

Thankfully, there's an easy way to be sure.

There should be exactly 14.25mm of space, on this model at least, between the needle bar and the presser foot bar.

And, well, I don't have to hold up a light behind that to see the gap. So, I have more timing to do.

I didn't take pictures of this part, but interestingly enough setting this timing is incredibly easy. There's a pinch bolt on the shaft that controls the angle of the needle bar frame, accessible through a little window in the upper part of the casting, near the rear inspection plate. I of course discovered this shortly after needlessly unscrewing the inspection plate, but whatever, it is what it is.

Loosening that screw allows the needle bar frame to swing freely, and then I just need to set it to exactly 14.25mm and tighten down the pinch bolt.

Of course, as you might imagine, this will throw off the timing between the needle and the feed dogs, because remember that the needle needs to go down through a tiny hole in that feed dog, and the two must move in sync.

Luckily this is also an easy process: by tipping the machine head back, you can access a pinch bolt on the lower shaft, and loosening that allows the feed dogs to freely slide back and forth. So you just line things up so the needle falls directly through the hole, a smidge towards the front of the machine, then tighten the pinch bolt back up.

But we're not done yet. The needle also needs to be in time with the hook, and we just moved the needle back in the machine by a fair amount, meaning that the hook will be meeting the needle a bit later in its rotation, and so it won't arrive in time for the tip of the hook to pass by the top of the needle eye.

But, again, this is also an incredibly easy adjustment to make. There's three set screws on the bevel gear driving the hook spindle, and you simply loosen those off and rotate the hook so that it meets the needle at the correct point in the cycle, such that the tip of the hook passes the needle just above the eye. Then you tighten down the middle set screw first, then the two other set screws, alternating back and forth to ensure that the bevel gear isn't pushed to one side or the other.

And while I was in there, I also gave the bobbin case opening lever a quick tweak, because I might as well cover everything. Well, everything except adjusting the feed dog height, but it's probably fine, I don't need to worry about it.

And the result?

It's a little close but clearance is clearance. I'll take it.

On the upstroke of the cycle, we can see that there's still more than enough room in the back of the slot.

So I'd say we're good to go now. Just need to double check that the zipper feet will clear too.

And they do. This is on the longest stitch length, 6mm, and the needle is placed exactly where it should be.

So, getting back to where we left off, one of the other goodies I picked up was some bonded nylon thread.

And by "some" I mean "a great deal" I guess. Amusingly, this spool cost about $15, and holds 6000 meters of heavy duty Tex70 bonded nylon thread. $15 will also buy you a 6-pack of standard name brand domestic sewing machine thread, for a sum total of 400 yards. I'll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions from that.

The most important part for me, though, is that this is properly bonded thread. Unlike the polyester thread, a lifetime supply of which is also pictured above, this new spool of thread won't separate its plies when you twist it, which makes it much, much easier to handle and way better to sew with.

And that leads us right into the next purchase, which is a device commonly known as a "thread zapper".

This being the mysterious Chinese non-brand clone of it, because it was cheaper than the official one and the official one had surprisingly bad reviews. Basically it's just a battery hooked up to a little loop of nichrome (probably) wire. You press the button, the wire heats up, and it quickly melts through the thread (assuming it's an artificial fiber, I don't think you'd have much success trying to melt through cotton) and simultaneously fuses the plies together, which helps prevent the ends from unravelling.

I'm happy to report that it seems to work quite well, for the few times I've tried it so far. Time will tell if it continues to perform, but things look promising at least.

I do have a few more goodies that I bought which I haven't gotten to yet, but I think this should be enough excitement for one day.