Rock and Roll Ironing Boards

 I've driven by Seymour, Indiana a hundred times without stopping. This past weekend, circumstances required me to get off the Interstate and drive into the hometown of Johnny Cougar and Seymour Home Products (formerly Seymour Tool and Engineering, later Seymour Industries and later still Seymour Housewares and then Home Products International - North America). I figured while I was there, I might as well find the factory which produced the ironing board from an earlier blog post. It was a weekend trip, so finding the factory was about all I could do; no factory tour this time. But, stay tuned. 

The factory made the news last year when HPI decided to shutter the plant. Then, just before the machinery was auctioned off, HDS Trading Corp. in New Jersey bought the HPI assets, reopened the plant as Seymour Home Products, and ironing board production resumed in September of 2022 - 80 years from when Seymour Tool and Engineering first opened for business. 

As I think I mentioned in the original post about my ironing board, Seymour Tool and Engineering sounds more like the sort of place that makes race car or airplane parts. That may well have been the original focus, but it's actually the sole producer of  American-made ironing boards since 1966. Originally Seymore Tool and Engineering, the company changed owners multiple times and was owned for a period of time by Lear Siegler, Inc., one of the original conglomerates which actually did have close ties to the aerospace industry. I find this oddly fascinating. I guess because ironing boards are one of those mundane products that nobody gives much thought to. The plant I found sits just off the main drag in Seymour, dwarfed by the neighboring Caterpillar engine factory. It doesn't even really look like a factory; it looks more like a former K-Mart or possibly a larger grocery store. If I had to guess, I'd say this is where the leg assemblies get painted, but I really have no idea. 

Ironing Boards Made Here! 

You can even see the ironing board legs in the windows if you look closely. 

Look Closely

There are other plants in Seymour, but we didn't take the time to find them all. Hopefully on a future trip. 

The good news is that ironing boards are still being made in the US heartland. There was a brief haitus when Home Products, Int'l shut down the Seymour operation in May of 2022, but the plants were back up and running by September of the same year after HDS Trading Corp. of NJ bought the plants and machinery. A year later, it looks like little Seymour, Indiana can still lay claim to being the only US manufacturer of ironing boards. (Seymour is also the original home of singer John "Cougar" Mellencamp, but he now lives in Bloomington and ironically seems to have forgotten his small town roots, despite the fortune he's made singing about them.) 

Yes, Virginia, There is a Five-Minute Project

When I was in my 20s I had an old house and a co-worker who had a similarly old house a couple of blocks away. We were fixing them up as best we could (we didn't have $1.2 million reno budgets like these 20-somethings on HGTV and had to do all the work ourselves). At work we would share our war stories from the previous night's efforts. After some time we discovered Cooper's Law of DIY Projects: anything you think will take five minutes will take you all weekend and any project you set aside an entire weekend to do will take no more than two hours. 

So far, pretty much all of my sewing projects I expect to take me several days each. And, so far, most of them have. Some have taken three years and still aren't done. . . In my defense, our outdoor cushions are perfectly serviceable. We just don't care for the pattern/colors. It’s not like I need to re-cover them. But, I feel compelled to reward my wife's patience while I figure things out and get more confident. Stuff takes longer when you have no idea what you’re doing.

I did have a very simple little project pop up recently which I decided to try last night before bed. I have a lawn vacuum with a bag that I wear on my back. It's just one of those leaf blowers that can be converted to a leaf sucker. The bag/backpack serves its purpose well enough: it holds the leaves I suck up with the leaf sucker. It's not the most comfortable thing to wear when it's warm out but it wouldn't be worth the effort to add spacer mesh or anything fancy. (Although I might try playing with some spacer mesh some day when I'm bored.) What the bag really needed, though, was some way to hang it up in my tool shed. I could hang it by the shoulder straps, and that’s what I’ve been doing. But, I don’t like doing that. The bag hangs funny and sticks out from the wall unnecessarily far. Plus, I mean, come on, Black and Decker. Shoulder straps are for shoulders. Put a hanging loop on it. They didn’t, so I did.

I’m sure I’ve got a piece of webbing or something like that I could have used to make a little hanging loop. But, I also happened to have some leftover tubular hose shielding fabric from a hose repair I did recently. You know those “pocket hoses” that have gotten popular, the ones that expand when the water is on but shrink down to next to nothing when you drain them.

Loosely related side story:

Don’t leave those hoses out in the sun with water in them. There’s a limit to how much they’ll expand. I made that mistake on one of those 1000-degree days back in July, but I turned it into a learning opportunity. First, I always wondered what those hoses looked like inside. Second, it was a good opportunity to practice hand stitching with a curved upholstery needle. The hoses are just some silicon-like tubing covered in some sort of woven nylon-ish fabric. Nothing magic. I felt around and found the burst spot in the tubing, cut the cover fabric and cleaned up the tubing ends, inserted a tubing splice fitting, secured the fitting with zip ties (the second time. . . ), and sewed the cover back together.

Here's how it came out:

Works like new. I'll send you some sort of certificate of achievement if you can pinpoint the repair. I think I did a pretty good job on this one. 

I didn’t cut away much tubing when I repaired the hose but somehow I ended up with at least a few feet of the fabric covering which I, of course, saved in case I found a use for it. Which I did, and which you are now reading about. The extra hose cover material was sitting around in my garage, where I last left my leaf sucking machine, and it seemed like just the thing for this little customization project. I cut off about 6” of it and formed a simple loop. I was all set to sew this loop to my backpack when I realized that the shoulder straps were sewn between two layers of fabric, not just tacked to the outside of the backpack like an afterthought. I couldn’t just slap the loop on like some drunk hillbilly, so I left the project for this morning when I had a break.

Cutting the original stitches was pretty easy. The hardest part was getting the wrapper off of one of those little break-off razor knives that I keep around for just such tasks. They’re very handy tools which you can buy super cheap at certain tool stores (I’m allowing a little room here for possible commercial affiliation opportunities on this blog. . . Guy’s gotta eat, right?). I highly recommend them for ripping very tight seams where a regular seam ripper might end up poking a hole through your work piece. Unwrapping them is a pain in the butt, though. You really need one that’s already unwrapped so you can use it to cut the plastic wrapper off new ones. Oddly, I couldn’t seem to find one that wasn’t already unwrapped and I broke off the end of the handle trying to unwrap a new one.

Very Handy Tools

Once I got the wrapper off my little cutter, I got the stitches between the shoulder straps cut so I could insert my loop ends. From there it was just a matter of getting things arranged under the presser foot and sewing everything back together with an x-box. Not my best stitching – I did this on The Beast (Consew 225), which sews up to 5000 stitches per minute and can quickly get ahead of my ability to feather the clutch motor.

Now I have a hanging loop!

 

Maybe not a true 5-minute project by the time I rethreaded the machine and did a little unplanned seam ripping but still pretty quick. I think the needle was just a bit too small for the thread I used. Not sure what’s in the machine right now but probably a size 16 or 18. The top thread was still wanting to shred some and is probably at least T90, possibly T135. Could have gone much smaller on both the thread and needle; there were visible needle holes when I got done and it’s not like this bag weighs 100 pounds. So, coming soon to this blog: an overview of thread and needle sizes. 

More Learning from My "Mistakes"

It's one thing to get a cargo pocket removed from a pair of cargo shorts. It's another thing entirely to sew it back on. That's one lesson I learned this week but should have already known. 

Of course, "knowing" something in your head and really KNOWING it are two different things. I "knew" that it's very tricky to sew anything to a sleeve (or, if you insist, pants leg*) without sewing the sleeve shut, but I really hadn't thought about this when I removed the pockets from my latest alteration project. Now I've got the shorts hemmed up so they aren't hanging below my knees but I have to figure out how to get the cargo pockets back on the pant sleeves. 

All Hemmed Up and Ready for Cargo Pockets

*I'm still advocating for the use of "sleeves" for both shirts and pants. Short-sleeve pants makes more sense than "shorts." We don't call short-sleeve shirts "shorts." But, maybe we should. Typing "short-sleeve pants" everywhere in this post was a huge pain. 

Other than this little glitch, my short-sleeve pants came out really nicely. No more looking like Charlie Brown.

The correct solution here would be to unstitch the pants almost completely, sew the pockets onto the pant sleeves, and then sew the pants back together. I really don't see me being able to sew the pockets back on without taking the pants apart at least partially, but I'll give it a shot using the free-arm feature on my Kenmore. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and pull out the seam ripper again. I could live without cargo pockets on this pair, but the pair I really want shortened needs pockets. So, I have to figure it out. 

Other lessons I've reinforced this week on this little project: 

1.    Check the bobbin before you start anything new. I got about halfway around one of the pant sleeve hems and ran out of bobbin. Of course, I didn't actually notice this until I had gone ALL the way around the hem. You've done this. I know it. 

2.    Don't be lazy about winding up a bobbin with matching thread. On probably most of my projects it hasn't mattered if the top and bottom threads matched. Definitely didn't matter for a pair of  short-sleeved camouflage/floral cargo pants. Except, the top thread color definitely did matter. No problem. As long as the top thread was black or OD green, everything should be fine, right? Not quite. 

Instead of unthreading my machine, winding up a bobbin full of black thread and then rethreading the machine, I refilled my empty bobbin with some white thread that was sitting right there on the cone stand. Saved myself having to unthread and re-thread the machine. Genius! I could just flip the pants over when sewing to be sure the top stitches were on "top" and the mismatched white thread was on the inside where nobody would see it anyway. Too easy. 

Problem with this is that it's easier to tell where you are on a hem when you can actually see the hem. Since my top thread needed to be on top (i.e. the "right" side), I really needed the black thread in the bobbin. I had to stitch the hems from the outside and guess/hope I was lined up. Not the end of the world, but it sure would have been easier to just wind up a bobbin with black thread and not have to worry about which side of my work piece needed to face up. 

I could have easily grabbed another cone of black thread; I must have at least three or four huge cones of the stuff around here. I could even have wound the bobbin on a different machine so I didn't have to unthread and rethread the machine I was using to sew on. Or, I could have just been not lazy and unthreaded my machine to wind up a bobbin with the exact same thread I was going to use for the top stitches. There was just no excuse for doing this. Next time I'll think it through better. 

3.    Final lesson: for at least the 10th time, put pins in so they pull out easily while sewing. In other words, put the pointy end toward the machine and the ball end toward you. That way, when you get close to the pin while sewing, you can just pull it out as you go. You don't have to stop early and wrestle the pin out. This requires thinking ahead, which is apparently not my strong suit. But, I'm getting better. I at least make sure the pins are pointing the right way when I put my work piece on the machine. There's a 50-50 chance that I could put them in right way when I pre-assemble pieces but somehow I always end up switching them around every single time I get to the machine. At least I catch it before I get everything under the presser foot and my backstitch done. 

Working this project on my Singer 241-12, a self-oiling industrial garment machine which was easily up to this task. The Kenmore could probably have handled it, but it's still tied up on my bell-topper project. 

Curtains!

I don't know how long ago I bought this fabric. Years, not months. Not ten years or anything like that but a couple of years at least. The window treatment in our guest room just didn't suit our tastes and since I had taken up sewing as a hobby my wife agreed that I could probably handle making some new window decor. How hard could it be? Not really that hard, as it turns out. 

The previous owner made her own curtains and a valance which far exceeded anything you could ever buy. Her work was exquisite, from liner fabric to piping and matching covered buttons. The facing fabric she used for the valance must have cost a fortune; unfortunately, that fabric had a sort of early-American/nursery rhyme motif on it which just isn't our style. Still, tough act to follow. 

It took us quite a while to decide what we wanted to do with the windows. I contemplated just duplicating the original drapery work with a different fabric and motif. We finally decided to keep the original (white) curtains and go with a basic bell topper valance. I got the bell topper idea from a used pattern I picked up at a thrift store. For fabric we picked out a royal blue linen-like coarse weave for the facing and a white cotton with subtle paisley pattern for the liner. I don't remember what the fabric cost but it was enough that, like the faux suede on my truck's headliner, I was afraid to do anything with it. Even if it wasn't the most expensive fabric around, quite a few yards were required to do just valances over a double window and a bed alcove opening. 

Despite my fear of ruining expensive fabric, I've been unusually motivated to get stuff done lately and I finally decided I'd rather have even a badly made valance than a pile of new fabric sitting around. The pattern is simple. Just very big! Took up the entire length of my work/ping pong table. 

The valance pattern: cut and laid out

First challenge was that my used pattern was missing the first page of instructions. Fortunately, the pattern package included several similar items and the instructions for each item were repeated. It was pretty easy to translate the steps from pages 5 and 6 to what I was trying to do on pages 3 and 4. 

Once the pattern was laid out, I had to take the plunge and just start cutting my fabric into panels. For long cuts, I really appreciate having a cutting mat and a rotary cutter. I get much nicer cuts that way. With scissors I always get jagged, ugly edges if I have to cut more than a few inches. I needed three panels of lining and three panels of facing for the short valance and four of each for the window - . So, 14 panels altogether. Making that first cut was like jumping into a strange swimming pool for the first time. Took my breath away but once I had committed to jumping in it got easier and easier. Took me quite a while, but eventually I got all the panels stitched together and had four long pieces of fabric, two pieces of liner and two pieces of facing. Getting the facing and liners pinned together wasn't all that hard, but getting the pattern pinned in place was a little tricky. The instructions had me folding my pieces and lining up the fold with a line on the pattern. I decided to pin the facing and lining for the short valance together, then fold it and pin the pattern on. That way I made one cut instead of two and I figured the odds that the liner and facing would match were much better doing it this way. It worked. 

Cutting the pieces went pretty well. My first effort didn't line up perfectly but it was workable. After that, it was just a matter of running a very, very long stitch around the sides and bottom edge. As usual, I pinned everything together - but put the pins in "backwards." Doesn't seem to matter what I'm working on, I will put the pins in backwards so they're harder to pull as I'm running stitches. Sometimes I catch myself before I get everything pinned together but not often. Once the sides and bottom were stitched together, I just had to turn everything right side out. And iron it. 

Stopping point before sewing down the rod pocket

Sewing involves an awful lot of ironing! And, on that note, it's pretty important to maintain your iron. If you don't, you're setting yourself up to ruin some fabric. I don't know how long my iron had been sitting around, but when I went to iron the seams on my liner panels I got a couple of brown spots from the steamer. I wasn't happy about that. I think they'll come out, but it's worth mentioning that cleaning your iron from time to time is a good idea. I filled mine with straight vinegar and ran that through followed by a full load of filtered water. Everything seemed to be working a little better after a good cleaning. Word of advice: avoid breathing in the vinegar steam. That stuff is wicked. 

To follow the pattern, all I have to do now is fold over the rod pocket and stitch it closed. But, I want a little extra touch on my valance, so I'm going to stitch some 1/4" jute rope along the bottom edge of the valance and the rod pocket. I'm also going to turn the rod pocket to the front so it's the facing fabric is visible across the top of the rod pocket. I don't have enough rope to do all of that, so this is my stopping point for now. I've ordered 160 feet of jute rope which should arrive pretty soon. . 

I'm using my Kenmore 1914 for this project, my very first machine which I picked up in a thrift store for $25 probably around 15 years ago. It hadn't been out of the closet for a while and needed to be run. I removed the top and bottom covers and oiled it. I had forgotten that my feed dogs won't disengage; that's not an issue on this project, but I remembered that while I was doing my basic clean up and oil maintenance. I'll look into that when I'm done with this project. I'm also not happy with the Coats thread I'm using; the spool is wound unusually tight so there's thread tension just coming off the spool. It's working, but I get an odd noise every once in a while when I'm sewing. The bobbin winder seems to be wearing out a little, too. Probably needs a new tire. Overall, though, the old Kenmore is hanging in there. 

I messed with the zigzag stitch settings and presser feet until I found a combination that worked for attaching the rope trim to the facing fabric. There's something not quite right with the zigzag bar inside the nose of my machine; if I shut the access door, the spring latch rubs against the zigzag bar. As long as I leave the nose door open, everything is fine. I'm using a huge cone of thread to set up and practice my stitches, so I really needed a thread holder to feed the thread from the cone to my machine. I have a few of these, but they're all screwed down to commercial tables so I had to improvise. I grabbed a piece of scrap 2x4 from my back deck project, drilled a hole into the wood, and used one of my other thread stand pieces to create a makeshift portable thread stand, which seemed to work fine. 

That's where I left off today. I only have 15 feet of jute on hand, so tomorrow I'll work on the rod pocket first and then attach all the jute I have. 

Forget Zippers - Pants Pockets will Make You Cry!

 When I first started sewing I heard that zippers were very tricky to install. I tried putting one in a make-up bag project and another in a tote and I just didn't see the big deal. Zippers just weren't that  challenging for me. You want a challenge? Try replacing the front pocket in a pair of cargo pants. I don't mean patching up a little hole at the bottom of the pocket pouch. I mean replacing the entire pouch. I had no idea pants were so complicated. 

I've got a pair of cargo pants which I really like, but a few years ago they developed a hole in the right front pocket. I haven't been able to wear the pants since then. I couldn't not jam my finger through the hole every time I put on the pants. I tried sewing up the hole. That just tore right through after one wearing. The original cloth was just too thin and too old to darn and trying to put a patch over the hole was worse than the hole. The only solution was a complete replacement of the pocket. 

Here's the page of drawings and notes I created to guide myself through the replacement of my front pants pocket on a pair of cargo pants: 

The original pocket pouch and my reverse engineering notes

There's more to pockets than I had ever considered. Depending on which website you read, there are anywhere from three to eight basic types of  pockets. I've read a bunch of articles on the subject recently, and I've concluded there are really just two kinds of pockets: patch pockets and set-in pockets. Everything else is just a variation on those two types. You've got "jetted" pockets, a set-in pocket with a "jet" or "welt" sewn around the opening for dressier clothing like suit jackets. You've got your flap pockets, which can be virtually any pocket - patch or set-in - with a flap sewn over it. There are infinite different shapes of flaps and some articles consider each different shape a distinct "type" of pocket. (I do not; flaps come in all sizes and shapes but once you put one on a pocket the pocket is still just a patch pocket or a set-in pocket with a flap.) There's the "seam pocket" which is yet another variation on the set-in pocket, just with the opening of the pocket coinciding with a seam. One article I read even considered the slash pocket to be a distinct type of pocket even though the only difference between a slash pocket and any other type of pocket is the position of the opening relative to a vertical or horizontal line. In short, I say there are two kinds of pockets, with lots of variations on each theme. My cargo pants pocket was a pretty standard set-in pocket which partly aligns with the pant leg seam. 

I couldn't find anything to tell me what the various pieces of a pocket are named, probably because there really aren't many pieces involved. I'm going with "pouch" for the functional part of a set-in pocket. History backs me up on this since pockets replaced the little pouches that people used to tie to their belts to carry their stuff in. (They hid the pouches behind their clothes. Eventually, someone figured out they could sew the pouch to the inside of their pants and cut a slit in the pants to get to the pouch. Very clever!) I've noticed that many pants front pockets have two "extra" pieces which provide some reinforcement and keep the pocket opening from looking weird. Patch pockets just have the "patch." And, then there's flaps. Pouch, reinforcement pieces, patches, and flaps and that's about it for pocket parts. 

The front pockets on my cargo pants, like most pants, are set-in pockets. There's the pouch, the part that had worn out and needed to be replaced. Sewn to the pouch are two reinforcement pieces made from fabric which matches rest of the pants. I have no idea what to call them. One piece actually closes the gap between the pants leg seam and the pocket pouch. You actually see that piece; the palm of my hand slides against it when I use the pocket. The other "reinforcement" piece seems to just make the outer part of the pocket a little stiffer and protect the pocket pouch from the wear and tear of the back of my hand sliding in and out of the pocket. 

Not super complicated, but figuring it out involved some serious de-constructing of my pants. First, I had to partially disassemble the waistband, including the bottom half of one bar-tacked belt loop. My waistband was lined with the same kind of fabric used to make the pocket pouch, so that took some fairly delicate work with a seam ripper. Then I had to rip the seam in the pant leg from the waist band to the bottom of the pocket, about 8" worth of double top-stitching. Toward the bottom of that seam there was a second seam where the inner half of the pocket pouch was closed up. Then I had to remove the two reinforcement pieces from the edges of the pocket pouch. By the time I was done removing the pocket, there was a giant hole in my pant leg and the waistband was no longer lined. It was sort of scary. Like those HGTV shows where Chip and Joanne go in and start tearing down walls and ripping out cabinets. Except this was the first episode and you don't know if Chip and Joanne know how to put everything back together. 

Before I got things put back together

I'm not sure how I got a hole in the original pocket. Probably from carrying a keyring in my pocket, combined with the fact that the original pocket was very soft and somewhat thin cotton which just wasn't up to the wear and tear of keys and rocks and other stuff that I tend to put in my pockets. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to try a medium weight poly knit this time to see if I can find that magic balance between durability and comfort. 

My first step after picking a fabric from my collection of remnants and bolt ends was to use the original pocket as a pattern to cut the new pocket bag. Since the stitches for this part wouldn't show, I went ahead and stitched the reinforcement pieces to the new pocket bag using a tan-ish colored 40 - 50 wt. thread while waiting for my new thread to arrive. That part seemed to go pretty well. 

Once my OD green thread showed up, I was able to start reconstructing my pants. The secret is just knowing which pieces go together first and sort of working from the inside out. Once the reinforcement pieces were attached to the pouch, it was a fairly simple matter of stitching the outer reinforcement piece to the pant leg, folding the pouch over, and stitching the inner reinforcement piece to the other half of the pant leg to close things up, and then closing up the waist band. And reattaching the belt loop. I wish I had remembered to attached the belt loop before I closed up the waistband, but I doubt anyone will notice. 

Here's how things came out: 

This is the original pocket (the other side) for comparison

And, here's the new pouch from the inside: 

New pocket

Not my best stitching work. I didn't want to mess with my serger so I played around with the zigzag stitches on my Kenmore 1802. 

Original pocket

If you don't look at the inside, I give myself a solid B. Maybe an A-. The stitching on the pouch is pretty awful looking, though. Overall, a C. But, I'm very happy to have my pants back. 

Thread Has Arrived

Why buy one spool when you can buy 20? 

My thread has arrived so pants pocket repair will commence tomorrow. I had no idea just how complicated pants are to make. Although, now that I've really torn into a pair, it's not all that bad. The trick is knowing what order to sew stuff together. I reverse engineered my pocket, took notes, drew some pictures, and then tried pinning parts together. 

Notes and thread, with the original pocket bag

You can see in the photo that I tried just re-sewing the original seam along the edge of the pocket, which sort of worked but then you can also see that there was another hole which needed to be patched. Darning may have worked but I have not really tried darning. Ultimately, I decided that the only real solution was complete replacement of the pocket. It has been a very educational project. 

For starters, I learned a little about fabric selection. Initially I was tempted to use the toughest, most durable fabric I could find - like Cordura Nylon or old fire hose material or something like that. No doubt I could carry my pocket knife in the open position and not have to worry about wearing a hole in a Cordura pocket. But, it's worth considering that a front pocket bag rubs against your thigh. Cordura isn't the most comfortable fabric out there and it's sort of stiff. The original pocket in my pants was a lovely, soft cotton. Felt very nice against my skin. Unfortunately, it was a very thin fabric and not durable at all. 

There's a balance between comfort and durability when it comes to pockets which I had never considered before. Besides being durable, you also want a fabric that will protect your skin from whatever you carry in your pocket. Like keys. Sometimes even nails or screws. Rocks. Etc. 

The replacement pocket with reinforcements sewn on

I opted for some knit material I bought a long time ago to patch a hole in a pair of my wife's slacks. It's fairly thick but very flexible and obviously somewhat comfortable since they make entire pairs of pants out of it. We'll see if I made a good choice. 

Another lesson learned already on this repair project: basting is your friend! Or just pinning. At some point I got a little overly enthusiastic and sewed a couple of pieces together before I really knew what I was doing. Naturally, I also used a tiny stitch length, so when I had to tear all that stitching apart I had to work extra hard at it. A good basting stitch would have allowed me to figure out how things needed to be put together without a lot of unnecessary seam ripping. I won't forget that in the future. More on pockets and this repair tomorrow or later this week. 
 

The headliner is glued down! 

This afternoon I got inspired to finish gluing down the faux suede on the headliner shell for my truck. If you don't look close, it doesn't look too bad. Another lesson in fabric selection here. You can see all the compound curves and recesses I was working with. I actually thought ahead on this and chose a fabric which seemed to have enough stretch to force into all these little curves. That didn't work out exactly as hoped and I've got a handful of spots where the fabric just didn't stick to the shell. I'll have to figure out a way to get those spots flattened out. I may just sew the fabric down to the shell. I had to make some relief cuts at the corners because those spots were just too complex for the fabric to stick. I'm not super happy with how it turned out, especially because my seam isn't centered on the headliner shell, but I'll make it work somehow. I guess for a first effort it turned out alright. I'd give it a C. 

Lumpy Returns

Lumpy is back! I never really went away. True to form, I got all hyped up about sewing and sewing machines and got in over my head to the point where I had to take a break and pursue other interests for a while (mainly swimming and lifeguarding but I've also done a lot of hiking and biking in the past year). I have a long list of projects that remain unfinished and my wife is getting a little impatient with my collection of fabric, patterns, tools, and sewing machines which eventually took over the (unused) formal dining room. (NOTE: it's always been unused. It's not like we used to use our formal dining room but had to quit using it because of all my stuff. I put my stuff there because it was unused space. Just wanted to make that clear. Does anybody actually use the dining room in their house anymore?) 

You'd think after a couple of years of working from home and not being able to go very many places I'd have finished at least one sewing project. I have not. I attempted to make a tiny ottoman-shaped pin cushion from a pattern set which I thought would be good practice for sewing small curves. It did not go well. My pin cushion looks like a sad, truncated cone-shaped clown. I have repaired one purse strap for my aunt  and resized two tactical equipment belts for a friend. And I sewed the two pieces of faux suede together for the roof liner in my truck. Took all the courage I could muster to take a pair of scissors to a 4-yard piece of faux suede. I was, as usual, terrified that I'd mess it up. I need to get that installed. I won't even try to recreate my list of undone projects; it starts with two sets of curtains and a dozen or so cushions for our patio chairs. 

Faux suede headliner - a 6' seam

I finally took the Beast to Collier's Equipment and got it working right, so there will be some heftier projects getting done soon. I need a hanging loop on my leaf vac and the Beast was born for that sort of thing. At some point I realized that I wasn't as interested in fixing sewing machines as I thought I was. Or, at least, at some point I had so many sewing projects stacked up that any interest I have in fixing sewing machines was overcome by the need to actually use a sewing machine to get some projects done. 

Meanwhile, I acquired a Singer 153-102 cylinder machine which needs a bit of tuning up. Not really sure when I last posted to this blog, but I also acquired yet a real Singer 20u33 not too long ago (the first one I got was actually a 20u13). And,  three more domestic machines that were just sitting in a thrift store begging to be taken (a Singer 503A, Brother 211, and a Kenmore 18023). Enough! 

Singer 503A

Brother 211

Kenmore 18023 in working order

Recently my wife made it clear that she wasn't very happy with the state of the dining/sewing room, which, to be fair, is right inside the front door. It's impossible for guests to not see it, so I got my rear in gear and started moving everything upstairs to the bonus room over the garage. Funnily enough, the previous owner used the bonus room for sewing. But, I originally had this space reserved as my dream music room. It's huge - plenty of room for all my music stuff plus a full-sized ping pong table for between set entertainment. The ping pong table has mostly been a work table to lay out one of the curtain projects, but laying out the pattern is about as far as that has gotten. Anyway, that space will be the new sewing area eventually. But, I can't just move a bunch of half-finished or "quick" projects upstairs - those are getting finished first. Starting with a pair of cargo pants with a hole in the pocket. 

I cannot stand to have a hole in a front pants pocket. Something about that feeling when I put my hand in my pocket and there's a hole I can't stop myself from jamming my finger through the hole which rarely helps. I'm just getting started on repair because I first had to pick a machine for the job and get it cleaned up and tuned. Probably should have just gone with my trusty Singer light-industrial 241-12 but it's threaded up with T92 thread for heavier stuff. So, the Kenmore 18023 it is. 

This machine worked OK right out of the thrift store. The feed dogs were a little inconsistent but I believe that was mostly a presser foot tension issue. The machine was really clean when I got it but a      little dusting and oiling helped some. I started out using overly heavy thread because I didn't have anything lighter in a suitable color. Most of the time I can fake the thread color with black or white, but the pants I'm fixing are OD green and contrasting thread won't look right. So, I ordered a box of thread from one of my preferred suppliers - 15 assorted king spools, 3 lbs. of assorted partial spools of embroidery thread that was on clearance, and a 1500 yard spool of OD green size T69 nylon thread. Should be here tomorrow. 

Projects

20u33 #3

Singer cylinder machine