So, over the summer, we repaired some screen windows and I grabbed the window screen mesh leftovers and stashed them away for potential future projects.
After the dubious outcome of the purse project in the previous post, I decided it would be a good time to make some simple zip bags with that mesh
but of course my ideas got away from me and I also made a small tote bag in a style I'd never made before (at least, I don't think I've made a bag with straps like this before)
I use a leather needle to sew leather, vinyl, pleather, laminated cotton, oilcloth, foiled fabrics, and anything with a similar coating. A leather needle (in, as with all needles, the appropriate weight) is all you need to use to make sewing any leather-like material work without any unwanted sticking.
Because the problem is not the vinyl sticking to the machine bed or the presser foot or the needle, the problem is that the holes made by a standard needle are so small they don't allow the thread to move how it needs to. Leather machine needles (and glover's needles for hand sewing) have broad tips that cut tiny slits in the material, which makes enough room for the thread to move freely. I have been using leather needles for machine sewing leather-like materials with no problem for nearly 20 years and I have never needed to change anything else about my machine.
But.
I am still very bad at designing purses.
See, in an effort to remind myself how easily vinyl sews with the correct needle, I dug through my small pieces storage and came up with some vinyl remnants that have been in the stash for a least ten years each (and are still stable, instead of disintegrating like some early 2000s vinyls have) and then gathered other things that seemed to coordinate with them and ended up with this pile of stuff
which, over the course of a few days, I turned into...this
Don't worry, there are many close ups of the bad design decisions under the cut
O'er on Tumblr, I mentioned that I have started sewing a vinyl project and am having zero problems with it simply and entirely because I am using the correct needle, and I got this question
I will be making a project this year almost entirely out of leather and vinyl. Please tell me more about this needle and where I can get some.
and here is my answer:They’re called leather needles or leather and vinyl needles, and are most commonly found made by Singer or Schmetz--I think JoAnn carries Schmetz leather needles and it looks like that’s what Wawak (my favorite site for ordering sewing supplies) carries, too.
Leather needles are more...let’s say they’re more unknown than they are uncommon.
Like all sewing machine needles, they’re available in different sizes for sewing through different weights of material.
They have broad points that essentially punch tiny slits into the material, which allows the thread to move easily back and forth as needed
...whereas standard point needles punch tiny holes that stretch out around the needle and then contract once the needle is removed, essentially increasing the likelihood of the material itself grabbing the thread.
I know people have success sewing leather and vinyl with things like non-stick standard needles and nonstick presser feet and layering the vinyl between tissue paper and applying tape to the machine bed/bottom of the presser foot so the smooth side of the tape is in contact with the project and using walking feet to move things along (or, in rarer, more alarming cases, applying oil to the bottom of the presser foot or powdering the entire project with corn starch/baby powder/talc), but the core problem of sewing leather and vinyl is not that the material is sticking to the presser foot or the machine bed, the core problem is that the thread is getting stuck in the material because the hole is too small.
That’s why hand-sewing needles meant for leather/vinyl--technically called glover’s needles--also have that broad point.
I started using leather needles to sew little pleather doll clothes nearly 20 years ago and have never had any problems sewing pleather, vinyl, leather, or coated/heavily foiled fabrics in that time, and all I do to my machine is switch from a regular needle to a leather needle.
And I am very salty about all of the other advice out there on the internet for sewing leather-like materials 😁
Another quick record of another quick project--I had put pool noodles in my taller boots to keep them from flopping, but the result was mostly that the now-held-straight boots just...fell over entirely.
So.
Time to make something connected.
No pattern involved and these are not pretty. Where there's not a pool noodle inside, they're stuffed very loosely with scraps of knit fabrics from other recent projects.
The first one I made had fabric just a bit too short to manhandle through the machine to close the ends, so I whipstitched them closed and then made sure to cut the second one longer so it could indeed be manhandled through the machine. Neither end is finished nicely but they are both finished, which is nice.
So, a while ago, I thrifted about a yard of a knit that looks like denim. Of course I immediately planned to make leggings, necessarily slightly cropped due to the length of the yardage. Since I ended up really liking the cropped length of the gray leggings I made that weren't the right kind of stretchy, I was perfectly OK with the idea of these being a bit short.
And because this leggings pattern has no side seams, I was able to throw 'em together fast after finishing the dress in the last post
Yeah, leggings always look terrible on the hanger like this. What matters here is that I am recording A Thing I Did.
I wanted to use up the rest of the fabric left over from making the not-pajama pants for the kiddo
but
the more I looked at that fabric, the more flaws and discolorations I found
but
eventually I decided to just go with it and not worry about fussy cutting around imperfections and ended up with this
Yeah, that works.
The kiddo has a dentist appointment soon. Like...tomorrow. And the only pair of pants he has that fits is this pair of sweatpants of dubious style I made for him a month ago. Which is what he wore to the dentist appointment last week. (That was the regular check up. He has some baby teeth that should have fallen out a while ago, so he's going back to get those taken care of.) I have suddenly gotten self-conscious and absolutely can't have him wear the Same Weird Pants to the dentist again. (especially since the rest of his outfit was the coordinating cat print stew shirt and the hoodie jacket made from the same fabric as most of the pants. So. It was A Look.)
Yesterday I grabbed Kwik•Sew 1650 and some strangely dense, but relatively muted, thrift store woven yardage (may or may not include synthetic fibers), with the intent to sew the pants very quickly today. Which, I did, but a lot of the sewing happened during the very concerning events of the day. But, dentist appointments go on, and there was no way I was going to a store to buy pants that fit him, so I sewed while history was being made (derogatory)
Iron it? Why would I do that?
I'm sure it'll be fine once it comes out of the dryer.
