![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I love sewing machines
Jul. 20th, 2015 11:39 am Being a member of a Border morris team means sewing an awful lot of tatter jackets. This one, modelled by the ever-gorgeous Oswin is the last one I made by hand.
We used have a rule that everyone made their own jacket, but it rapidly became apparent that everyone meant to do it and very few actually got around to it. So, I ended up doing most of the jackets with help from one or two others. Every darn one of them had vast numbers of tatters stitched on by hand. During a season's dancing, a fair number of them become detached. I took to double-stitching the edges of each tatter, but even that didn't prevent it entirely.
My Mother in Law, the wonderful Molly, asked me recently if I'd like an advance birthday present of a sewing machine. I practically bit her hand off. (I'd had one or two second-hand machines in the past, but never managed to get them to work properly). My new machine is a Brother LS14, a basic model, with no fancy features, but it works and is dead easy to use. Tatter jackets have suddenly become easier and several hemming and repair jobs for trousers, etc that had been sitting around for ages have suddenly been done.
I'm starting to work through the existing jackets, reinforcing each row of tatters with machine stitching. It'll be a long job, even with the machine, but I'd never even have attempted it by hand.
I've done one new jacket already for our new banjo player, and I'll shortly do another one for our drummer.
We used have a rule that everyone made their own jacket, but it rapidly became apparent that everyone meant to do it and very few actually got around to it. So, I ended up doing most of the jackets with help from one or two others. Every darn one of them had vast numbers of tatters stitched on by hand. During a season's dancing, a fair number of them become detached. I took to double-stitching the edges of each tatter, but even that didn't prevent it entirely.
My Mother in Law, the wonderful Molly, asked me recently if I'd like an advance birthday present of a sewing machine. I practically bit her hand off. (I'd had one or two second-hand machines in the past, but never managed to get them to work properly). My new machine is a Brother LS14, a basic model, with no fancy features, but it works and is dead easy to use. Tatter jackets have suddenly become easier and several hemming and repair jobs for trousers, etc that had been sitting around for ages have suddenly been done.
I'm starting to work through the existing jackets, reinforcing each row of tatters with machine stitching. It'll be a long job, even with the machine, but I'd never even have attempted it by hand.
I've done one new jacket already for our new banjo player, and I'll shortly do another one for our drummer.
