• 0 Posts
  • 55 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

help-circle







  • I feel like most of the people answering you are not actually sewists.

    The person mentioning the serger/overlocker machine is correct regarding stretchy material. You can do it on a sewing machine but it won’t look nice. On a regular sewing machine, a straight stitch will give you a non-stretchy seam. A zigzag stitch will be stretchy but most often people aren’t pleased with the look of it. If you look at the inside of a t-shirt, the side seams are generally done with a serger. (A coverstitch machine is usually what is used for a hem. It makes a row of two lines on the front. It only does that.) The reason a serger works better for knit fabric is because of the differential feed, meaning it can better handle sewing two stretchy fabrics together such as in a seam. A sewing machine only feeds by catching the bottom fabric and scooting it forward, and that can cause issues if the fabric is stretchy.

    You also need appropriate needles, especially for something like spandex. I haven’t worked with it at all so I’m not sure 100% what to recommend, but possibly a ball point or microtex needle.

    Meanwhile, for upholstery, all you need (I think) is a straight stitch. Technically you could even try to do it by hand, but depending on the material, it could be really difficult. You’d definitely need a heavy duty needle, and possibly pliers to pull the needle through thick fabric. If you went for a machine, you’d want something robust. I’m actually about to try an upholstery project using my mid-range Bernina; it has successfully sewn several bags so I think it can handle it. But Bernina is not a mid-level brand, and I spent good money on that machine. Certainly, like in most things, you get what you pay for.










  • Totally get that. I used to be that way; somewhere along the line I decided that I would not allow myself more than three WIPs at a time, and I’ve mostly been pretty disciplined about that, and it’s helped. I make a lot of sweaters for myself so when people learn that I knit, they know to ask me if I made what I’m wearing, and the answer is often “yes.” The ones who are also crafters just admire the work, but the ones who aren’t start telling me I should sell (big lol) or that they’d pay me to make them one. If I charged an hourly rate, it’d probably mean upwards of a thousand bucks for a single sweater, but they have no concept of that.

    Anyway, I hear you on the learning new stitch patterns and then getting bored. I mostly knit while in meetings or watching TV these days, because it got easy. I had to learn something new (sewing) to stretch my brain because knitting wasn’t doing it anymore.




  • Regarding stickiness, perhaps it’s because the internet is ubiquitous now. Fifteen years ago, those of us on Fark and Digg and Reddit came to the internet for a lot of things. Notably, we kept in touch with friends that way (MySpace and Facebook) and in particular, we got our news that way. My parents were incredulous forever and still kinda are that I “don’t watch the evening news.” Now everyone uses it for everything. The big difference is that the early adopters are naturally more open to change because they adopted something that was a change. The rest of the population was slowly pushed into it. Now they don’t want to leave the sites that they’re used to (e.g. Reddit and Facebook) because they aren’t that open to change in the first place.