Retired from newspapers and television, currently sailing Thelonious II, a 1984 Ericson 381.
The first sewing project was a cover for a wooden pram, to be supported using the mast as a ridge pole. I measured the boat and allowed for a 2-inch hem for shock cord under the gunwales. After studying instructional videos at Sailrite.com I purchased #18 needles and V-92 thread for my Singer 237. The Sailrite videos are far (far, far, far!) from Hollywood quality, but excellent on method and technique. After ordering Sunbrella fabric I had to call the company because the bill was for $18/yard, not $25/yard as advertised. “Oh, that’s our discount” was the reply. Since I needed a hole for the mast at each end of the cover, I just folded back the edges and sewed them down. I now know better: binding tape makes a cleaner-looking and more protected edge).
I ordered the Sailrite hot knife ($130) to cut Sunbrella, since it heat-seals the fabric edge. It turns out to have many shop uses, from cutting line to "revising" plastic items. A good pair of fabric shears is also handy.
My sewing had a ways to go at this point. The dinghy cover taught me to pay close attention to the thread path from spool to needle and the winding and installation of the bobbin. I discovered that to fit big pieces of cloth through the machine, you can roll one side into a tube. But I was still getting bird nests under the cloth and a lot of unexplained jams. I began to see the sewing machine as a mighty complicated and sophisticated piece of machinery in which many tensions and gears work together – or don’t. I fiddled with different thread tension settings, but couldn’t find a pattern to my problems.
Hatch covers were next .
I used shock cord instead of line, and they came out pretty well. After the first fitting I improved the corners and found small revisions in design to be easy. Just cut the unwanted stitches out with an X-acto knife or seam ripper and re-stitch as needed - - sewing mistakes are not like drips in Awlgrip. And if you go really wrong, there’s always a patch. I found I was beginning to relax and enjoy myself.
On to the pedestal cover. After installation of a teak drink rack on the binnacle rail, my old cover not only was faded, rotten and the wrong color, but no longer fit. A pedestal cover, however, is a complex three-dimensional shape that I had no idea how to measure for - - just the sort of job we pay pros to do right, using their hard-earned skills. They still have the real skills, but the secret of how to pattern an irregular-shaped cover is no longer a secret in Sailrite video "How to Make a Personal Watercraft Cover."
I decided to think for myself and not use the Sailrite measurement technique, but instead to deconstruct the old pedestal cover and use the panels as templates. In fact, I continued this plan through subsequent projects, in line with my motto of “When Wrong, Keep Being Wrong”. You’d think time would be saved, but ripping out the seams of even a rotten cover is tedious and the result is hard to measure due to wrinkles and bias and stretch. I now realize that people have been sewing since the first time Adam ripped his pants, and all the good shortcuts are known. For example, a dedicated non-stretch pattern cloth such as Dura-Skrim makes a much better pattern than the scrap plastic pieces I used.
The first-version pedestal cover was OK, but I was able to improve the fit just by folding some cloth together to take up slack. They’re called darts. Mark them as needed and then sew them in. I don’t see the need for a Sailrite drawstring on a pedestal cover, so I just enclosed an old piece of three-eighths Dacron line inside the hem, for heft and weight.
A new mainsail often means a new cover, since stiff Dacron or full-length battens make for a bigger pile of sail. I wanted an extra-deep cover to protect the blocks of the vang and main and for a more draped effect. Sailrite kits have a skinny-jeans look, so once again I laboriously deconstructed the old sail cover, laid the pieces out on Sunbrella, and hot-knifed modified new panels.
The semi -flat-felled seams required are well explained in various Sailrite videos--one line of thread is hidden as a hedge against thread rot. The fastenings are dealer’s choice. I chose a zipper at the mast, which I now think looks less traditional than the usual connectors. The connectors under the boom are arranged so they don't conflict with the main sheet and vang, one of the perks of designing your own cover. Then I was looking at 14 feet of Sunbrella laid out on my floor and it was time to begin.
Sewing is done inside out, so the seams don’t show. With half a dozen panels and a large mass of cloth, keeping the correct sides together jangled my brain. I re-measured multiple times. The long sewing lines of a sail cover add two challenges. First, all that cloth has to pass through the machine. A careful roll of one side is the answer and time spent being neat pays off. The second is the tendency of long runs to pucker and therefore shrink. That’s where a sail maker’s machine comes in handy for its long stitches, which reduce that effect. With a home machine, you just have to keep tension and plan on some minor shrinkage. But there is a lot of sewing involved and I still couldn’t predict a jam-free experience.
And yet, the jams went away. Over time I’d come to see that if the material catches under the table, it bends the needle and creates problems. Attention to wrangling the cloth is required. I learned not to raise the presser foot unless the moving arm is in top position- - which eliminated the usual foul at the end of a stitch line. I learned to automatically check the thread path for hang-ups, to start a stitch only with the needle buried, and to bury when rounding a corner. I was now alert to when the bobbin would run out and knew to concentrate on keeping stitch lines straight or parallel. It took about six hours of actual sewing to feel confident. The machine seemed to know it and began to hum fast and true, the tough polyester thread running fast off the big spool, the chattering canvas pouring steadily forward into finished piles and the birds chirping admiringly from the window.
Sailrite sells double-sided tape to hold these long seams together for stitching, and it works. But the real answer for me was the simple office stapler. A long triple hem (1 1/2 inches folded twice) can be hard to keep uniform as it goes through the machine. Just fold before and staple it every foot, and then after sewing pull the light staples out. That’s a trick of the trade I would never have found without Google.
By now I had a pile of sewmanship “notions” (tools). A seam ripper. Soapstones, to safely mark fabric. A machine cleaning and oiling kit. Number 16 and 18 needles. Lots of V-92 UV thread in several colors. Scissors, thread-snippers, X-acto knife, metal yardstick, tape measure, big straight pins, double-sided tape, a $130 hot knife and my favorite of all, the stapler.
When I finished the sail cover the aft ends did not meet and the horizontal line under the boom had an unplanned curve in it for five feet. On the boat, I made corrective marks, then ripped out my mistakes, refolded, re-trimmed and re-sewed. The final result was as neatly sewn as most of the commercial products you see on the dock– and better than some.
Part 3: Interior upholstery, sunshades and bags, and the unexpected usefulness of sewmanship at home.
I ordered the Sailrite hot knife ($130) to cut Sunbrella, since it heat-seals the fabric edge. It turns out to have many shop uses, from cutting line to "revising" plastic items. A good pair of fabric shears is also handy.
My sewing had a ways to go at this point. The dinghy cover taught me to pay close attention to the thread path from spool to needle and the winding and installation of the bobbin. I discovered that to fit big pieces of cloth through the machine, you can roll one side into a tube. But I was still getting bird nests under the cloth and a lot of unexplained jams. I began to see the sewing machine as a mighty complicated and sophisticated piece of machinery in which many tensions and gears work together – or don’t. I fiddled with different thread tension settings, but couldn’t find a pattern to my problems.
Hatch covers were next .
I used shock cord instead of line, and they came out pretty well. After the first fitting I improved the corners and found small revisions in design to be easy. Just cut the unwanted stitches out with an X-acto knife or seam ripper and re-stitch as needed - - sewing mistakes are not like drips in Awlgrip. And if you go really wrong, there’s always a patch. I found I was beginning to relax and enjoy myself.
On to the pedestal cover. After installation of a teak drink rack on the binnacle rail, my old cover not only was faded, rotten and the wrong color, but no longer fit. A pedestal cover, however, is a complex three-dimensional shape that I had no idea how to measure for - - just the sort of job we pay pros to do right, using their hard-earned skills. They still have the real skills, but the secret of how to pattern an irregular-shaped cover is no longer a secret in Sailrite video "How to Make a Personal Watercraft Cover."
I decided to think for myself and not use the Sailrite measurement technique, but instead to deconstruct the old pedestal cover and use the panels as templates. In fact, I continued this plan through subsequent projects, in line with my motto of “When Wrong, Keep Being Wrong”. You’d think time would be saved, but ripping out the seams of even a rotten cover is tedious and the result is hard to measure due to wrinkles and bias and stretch. I now realize that people have been sewing since the first time Adam ripped his pants, and all the good shortcuts are known. For example, a dedicated non-stretch pattern cloth such as Dura-Skrim makes a much better pattern than the scrap plastic pieces I used.
The first-version pedestal cover was OK, but I was able to improve the fit just by folding some cloth together to take up slack. They’re called darts. Mark them as needed and then sew them in. I don’t see the need for a Sailrite drawstring on a pedestal cover, so I just enclosed an old piece of three-eighths Dacron line inside the hem, for heft and weight.
A new mainsail often means a new cover, since stiff Dacron or full-length battens make for a bigger pile of sail. I wanted an extra-deep cover to protect the blocks of the vang and main and for a more draped effect. Sailrite kits have a skinny-jeans look, so once again I laboriously deconstructed the old sail cover, laid the pieces out on Sunbrella, and hot-knifed modified new panels.
The semi -flat-felled seams required are well explained in various Sailrite videos--one line of thread is hidden as a hedge against thread rot. The fastenings are dealer’s choice. I chose a zipper at the mast, which I now think looks less traditional than the usual connectors. The connectors under the boom are arranged so they don't conflict with the main sheet and vang, one of the perks of designing your own cover. Then I was looking at 14 feet of Sunbrella laid out on my floor and it was time to begin.
Sewing is done inside out, so the seams don’t show. With half a dozen panels and a large mass of cloth, keeping the correct sides together jangled my brain. I re-measured multiple times. The long sewing lines of a sail cover add two challenges. First, all that cloth has to pass through the machine. A careful roll of one side is the answer and time spent being neat pays off. The second is the tendency of long runs to pucker and therefore shrink. That’s where a sail maker’s machine comes in handy for its long stitches, which reduce that effect. With a home machine, you just have to keep tension and plan on some minor shrinkage. But there is a lot of sewing involved and I still couldn’t predict a jam-free experience.
And yet, the jams went away. Over time I’d come to see that if the material catches under the table, it bends the needle and creates problems. Attention to wrangling the cloth is required. I learned not to raise the presser foot unless the moving arm is in top position- - which eliminated the usual foul at the end of a stitch line. I learned to automatically check the thread path for hang-ups, to start a stitch only with the needle buried, and to bury when rounding a corner. I was now alert to when the bobbin would run out and knew to concentrate on keeping stitch lines straight or parallel. It took about six hours of actual sewing to feel confident. The machine seemed to know it and began to hum fast and true, the tough polyester thread running fast off the big spool, the chattering canvas pouring steadily forward into finished piles and the birds chirping admiringly from the window.
Sailrite sells double-sided tape to hold these long seams together for stitching, and it works. But the real answer for me was the simple office stapler. A long triple hem (1 1/2 inches folded twice) can be hard to keep uniform as it goes through the machine. Just fold before and staple it every foot, and then after sewing pull the light staples out. That’s a trick of the trade I would never have found without Google.
By now I had a pile of sewmanship “notions” (tools). A seam ripper. Soapstones, to safely mark fabric. A machine cleaning and oiling kit. Number 16 and 18 needles. Lots of V-92 UV thread in several colors. Scissors, thread-snippers, X-acto knife, metal yardstick, tape measure, big straight pins, double-sided tape, a $130 hot knife and my favorite of all, the stapler.
When I finished the sail cover the aft ends did not meet and the horizontal line under the boom had an unplanned curve in it for five feet. On the boat, I made corrective marks, then ripped out my mistakes, refolded, re-trimmed and re-sewed. The final result was as neatly sewn as most of the commercial products you see on the dock– and better than some.
Part 3: Interior upholstery, sunshades and bags, and the unexpected usefulness of sewmanship at home.
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