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I haven’t written a sewing post for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been sewing.  I’ve been spending my time learning all about my new Janome 15000v2 Sewing and Embroidery machine and learning how to use the embroidery attachment, hoops and software.

I’m quite encouraged!  I’ve created a few test stitch outs and I’m currently designing and stitching out some designs I want to use to create some presents.  As they are presents I can’t put them on this blog yet, but once they have been given to the receipients I will be posting them.

My other sewing job is my normal one over the Winter months.  Repairing and making things for our boat.  This year, a pull tie that opens the closure for one of the sail battens needed stitching back firmly and I had to reinforce some places on the sail cover where the rope for the lazy jack lines, which tie on to some webbing loops, was wearing through – so our dinning room has become the ‘sail loft’ as it has more room than my sewing studio plus the studio would need to be heated for me to work in there.

Here  I am battling with the main sail and using the 1895 Singer 28K to do the stitching.SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURESIt didn’t take long to do and then I went on to the sail cover.  I decided to place some webbing over the 2 places that were wearing – and to make it look symmetrical I also did the same to the same places on the opposite side.

We have an old sail cover that I cut and use for patching, and it also has some webbing I can use.  The webbing was not as wide as I needed for the reinforcing so I used the 1969 Cresta T132-3 to stitch two pieces together with a zig-zag.  Ideally I would have liked a 7mm zig-zag, and it only has a 5mm one but it did the job.  I also used it to stitch the webbing on, as it stitches well in reverse and to save turning all that fabric through the small space between the machine bed and arm.  The Singer 28k has no reverse.

The Cresta did the job brilliantly – once I’d managed to get the bobbin wound!  It was a bit of a nightmare.  The Cresta uses industrial type bobbins, meaning there are no holes in it to enable you to hold a thread while it starts off.  This means you need to do a couple of winds around the bobbin to hold the thread in place to get it started.  Well that’s the theory.  And the theory works fine with normal thread – but not with the V69 thread I needed to use for the canvas.  This is a bonded polyester UV stable thread and quite thick and slippery.

As you can imagine it just kept slipping around the bobbin.  I thought I’d try winding it on the Janome which has a place which cuts and holds that starting bit of thread, but the hole in the Cresta bobbin was too small to fit on its bobbin spindle.

I eventually got it started somehow, but now just thinking about it maybe if I wind a small amount of normal thread around the bobbin first and then the V69 it might work better – I must remember to try that.

Here you can see the sail cover ready for me to start the stitching.SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURESAnd here you can see how it and the sail have taken over our dinning room – I just need to do a bit more tidying up of the seams I did last year which are starting to fray, especially where I replaced the zip.  Then we didn’t have a hot knife to cut and seal the fabric at the same time so I will just use the hot knife to run past the edges and seal the acrylic canvas to sort that.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURESNext on the agenda are the winch covers – 4 of them – and an anchor windlass cover, but I have to buy the canvas for those first so I need to do some measurements.  With the bad weather it’s not really conducive for doing that at the moment, though at least the boat is currently out of the water for a winter overhaul, so it will be more sheltered than it would be if it was in the water when I do get down to the marina.