Saturday, January 8, 2011

What's cooking: complications


I figured out how to use the sewing machine and I've been trying out some things. Simply sewing small pieces of felt onto another piece of felt is not easy! It's quite difficult to control the machine, especially the speed with which it stitches and way too often the stitches go everywhere except where I want them to go. Most of the time I just practiced sewing instead of actually trying to make anything rabbit-like.
I think eventually (with loads more practice) I could maybe make something nice and creative looking, but something is wrong with my brand new sewing machine. The stitches it makes are unbalanced. The top and bottom thread are supposed to lock in the center of the fabric, and look like my top threads do (pictures on the left). 

But my bottom threads give the appearance of straight lines (pictures on the right), indicating that the upper thread is too loose (according to the manual that came with the machine). I'm supposed to turn the thread tension dial to a higher number to increase tension, problem is that it's already at its highest.

Now, I have to wait until Monday for Singer Customer Service to open and give them a call. Bummer.
So for now it's back to stitching by hand, which is so much slower, but also so much better for me. The result looks much nicer because I have a lot more control and it's more fun because it doesn't make me feel like such a klutz.

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