Thursday, February 23, 2012

Sewing, by Hand and by Machine

I think I may be a hand-stitching snob.

I've known for a while that when it comes to clothing and knitting that I'm a fiber snob - too much man-made fiber in my clothing is icky to wear, and too much in knitting yarn feels squeaky, or something - it's hard to describe.

But this morning I realized I may be a hand-stitching snob. It happened when we were discussing the vertically-stacked pockets, the next variation on them to make, and I mentioned that I don't think I'm going to get them done for the event Saturday. In reply, Ron pointed out that a lot of the sewing involved in the pockets could be done on the big sewing machine, and would go a lot faster.

I twitched, and hemmed, and hawed, and agreed. My only real comment against machine sewing was that hand-stitching looks nicer. Ron countered that we can shorten up the stitch length on the sewing machine (which will help the appearance). I agreed, and said that if we leave long tails so we can get all the ends to the back sides, and melt them off (so they don't fray), it would also help.

Therefore, I'll cut out another set of pockets for Ron to try machine-sewing. Which also means I need to clean up the big sewing machine (which is currently buried), and the area directly in front of it. We may also need to get Marmaduke and/or X1 to come and help Robin move it over away from the metal workbench, we haven't tried using the sewing machine since bringing the workbench up from the basement a while back. Not that those are bad thing to need to do, as we also need to make satchels and belt satchels, both of which are machine-sewn.

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