CoudreMODE » Tools

A Great Tool: Rivet-In

coudremode — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:51:16 +0000

Right now I’m finishing up a vest from Simplicity 2556 for Abby and she wants nailhead embellishments on the leather collar. The most secure way to attach studs or nailheads is with a bench setter, but they are way more expensive than what I need for an occasional project like this. Hot-Fix nailheads are not really an option as they fall off after a few weeks when applied to leather. Over the years I’ve experimented with various hand held setters and each and every one of them has been a disappointment.

Still last week I thought I’d check Ebay one more time and Lo! I found a listing by Susan’s Sweet Beads for the Rivet-In, an inexpensive, fast, easy to use and accurate way to set studs and nailheads. The Rivet-In is a solid metal, 4″ long, spring-loaded tool for setting metal studs onto fabric. It works best on denim and solid fabrics but can handle lace to thin leather. It also sets rhinestones with rimmed prong settings. There is a story behind this too: In the 60′s an aircraft parts manufacturer in Culver City, Calif. was commissioned to make this tool for a company, once it was approved they made about 2,000. The company bought 1 ,000 and then went out of business. Susan had been buying them100 at a time from the manufacturer till he retired in 2002 and then she bought the remaining inventory. There are a just couple hundred left and if you think you’d find this useful get one because they they’re gone they are gone for good. Susan has a video in her Ebay store that she has allowed me to use on CoudreMode and it perfectly illustrates how to use this handy tool. No more hammers and clamping tools! YAY! Susan fulfills orders with lightening speed and a joy to deal with.

Postcards from Kyoto – Misuyabari and Hakotou, for lovers of sewing and handcrafts

coudremode — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:19:26 +0000

Used with permission of Just Hungry

Two blogs I read all the time are Just Bento (about that very subject) and her sister blog Just Hungry (about Japanese food and culture generally.) Both are written by Maki, Japanese woman with a finely tuned palate and a deep love of food and culture. If you really want the down low on what Japan is like from the inside follow her blogs. She was recently back home and did a blog tour of the country, and in Kyoto took us to many places off the beaten track such as tiny little stores that sell artisan sewing notions like these animal pins, which are the essence of kawaii (a Japanese love of cuteness that lasts long after childhood. ) The link to her blog post has many more wonderful photos as well as an examination of hand sewing needles that reads like treatise on samurai swords, and I say without a trace of irony. I want to go to Japan!

A Great Beauty Tool

coudremode — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:42:39 +0000

I have to say my hair is something I really can’t complain about, it’s always been easy to care for and looks pretty good 90% of time. Still, I was unhappy with every blow-dryer I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned at lot of them; they just seem to have a limited life span and they never produce the same results at a professional salon dryer. My ideal blow-dryer has the features of those used in salons but was not $75+. I can understand why salons need the heavy duty dryers because the darn things are going for hours as a time, but for home use that’s a bit pricey. But I still wanted salon dryer features and found it in this Revlon 1875 Ionic Ceramic Dryer. It has 1875 watts, a hot-warm-cool temp setting, high-low speed settings, a cold shot button and an ion feature. That means 8 different temp-speed combinations and ion works with all of them. The hot setting is not so hot it will toast your scalp and the cool setting at high speed is great for taming frizz and setting a style. Its light weight, the handle is well balanced and it’s easy to control with one hand. About $30 at Target stores and only $23 at Amazon.

Gravity Feed Gymnastics

coudremode — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:35:22 +0000

I love my gravity feed iron but I had to figure out a way to keep the cord and tubing out of the way when I use it. The problem is the tubing goes up to the water jug suspended from the ceiling and the cord goes down to the wall outlet. My Silver Star came from Zipperstop and it came with two plastic s-hooks. The first hook keeps the cord and tubing aligned and the second is rigged with string looped to the ceiling hook. Even if your iron didn’t come with these handy s-hooks just go to Loews or Home Depot and get three small s-hooks and some chain. The s-hooks should fit snuggly onto the cord and tubing. Attach one end of the chain to an s-hook and attach a second s-hook to the ceiling hook that suspends your water jug. The third s-hook is used to keep the tubing and cord parallel. The chain should be long enough to allow the iron to extend comfortably to the end of your board. The whole contraption will look this this; the small white object is s-hook #1 and s-hook #2 attaches to the string.

Click for a Closer View

M’am, Step Away From the Serger and No One Will Get Hurt

coudremode — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:04:07 +0000

What is it about the zeitgeist of the 70′s ? Was the entire decade was due to the failure of radical politics combined with cheap recreational drugs? If I hadn’t lived through it to prove it really happened I could totally see how a person could be come a 1970′s denier. Some of you have seen this in email, but – well – it’s a classic!

A Great Sewing Tool – Yardage Calc for iPhone/iTouch

coudremode — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:25:24 +0000

Click for a Closer View

A few months ago I was on Pattern Review and noted on an iPhone/iTouch thread that the available sewing related apps applied only to quilting. I was surprised that someone hadn’t written an app that recalculates yardages for garment patterns. Well, this morning I got an email from an iPhone developer named Mark Guleno who has written just such an app! Its called Yardage Calc and it recalculates from one yardage to another based on the fabric width. There is also a conversion function for metric. The screen shot explains it perfectly. So I went over to the iTunes App Store and downloaded it this morning; it works just great!

Okay Back to Sewing

coudremode — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:45:11 +0000

This little PC desk came from IKEA and it was easy to put together; the size is perfect as a base for my Touch n’ Sew buttonhole station. The white bins are IKEA as well; I have eight of them in various sizes. One interesting thing about their stuff is that its all designed to fit together, the space on the right is normally where the PC tower would stand. The keyboard tray pulls out and has been pressed into service as a place to stash my collection of scissors and hemostats. A piece of non-skid shelf liner has been added to keep things from sliding around.

Singer Professional Buttonholer Or How I Found Religion

coudremode — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:55:32 +0000

regular, keyhole and bound buttonhole

For a few weeks now there has been a discussion on Pattern Review about Greist and Singer buttonhole attachments, and I’ve had a Singer for a long time. I never used it because it never dawned on me to see if it fits a vintage Singer Touch n’ Sew 648 that I have stashed under my cutting table. Well – it fits! And it makes a better buttonhole than my fancy Bernina. Here it is set up on the Touch ’n Sew. This machine is perfect as a dedicated buttonhole machine because its small, 14 inches wide and the footprint is only 18 inches wide. I can leave it set up permanently with the buttonholer attached. The only downside is that 648 bobbins hold just 20 yards of thread, however the bobbin winds in the machine too, which is very handy. I may go to IKEA and get small table so I can leave it set up next to my industrial full time. Singer made thousands of these little machines and they are easy to find on Ebay and Craigslist. SewUSA sells Touch n’ Sew manuals and their web site has instructions for winding a bobbin and a thread diagram, which is also inside the cover plate in the head. This is a simple all mechanical machine and after a few test runs I was cranking out great buttonholes easily.

The buttonholer attachment is also widely available on the web. It appears that Greist and Singer sold them from roughly the 1940′s to the 1970′s. So if you’ve been thinking about setting up a buttonhole station here are the basics:

Make sure you find the attachment that fits your machine; the buttonholer came in vertical shank and slant shank versions.

Make sure you use the right throat plate. The buttonhole attachment has its own feed dogs and the plate covers the feed dogs in the machine. There are three different types of throat plate (scroll down to see them) . If you have a newer machine that can drop the feed dogs you don’t need to worry about the throat plate. A Singer Touch n’ Sew 648 requires the throat plate on the left in the link above; there are no screw holes because a 648 has an “elevator” feature that raises throat plate with a lever and the buttonole plate slips under the indentations on either side.

For both the Greist and Singer attachment buttonholes are sized and stitched with small cams. The buttonhole cams drop into the top of the attachment. There are 20 cams in a complete Singer set, a complete set of Greist cams seems to be about 13 to 15 based on what people were saying on PR. Greist cams are pot metal, Singer cams are pot metal or plastic depending on the age of the attachment.

Buttonhole attachments of either brand seem to run $10 – $25 depending on how complete they are (cams, manual etc), and Touch n’ Sew machines can be had for short money too; maybe $50. All in all this is a great machine + attachment combination if you’re seeking better buttonholes.

Pantone Shopping Guide: Check to make sure you have all the pages

coudremode — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:47:35 +0000

A few weeks go I was on Gorgeous Fabrics comparing fabric and looking up color numbers in my Pantone Shopping Color Guide fanbook, and much to my surprise it turns out a page is missing. The color and its page number was listed in the index; however I had page 127 and 129 but no 128. I called Pantone and they are replacingmy guide at no charge, they even gave me their UPS account number for the shipping. The fan book is bound with a plastic screw and I thought they could send the missing page, evidently the screw is heat set and it’s not removable. So if you ever encounter this problem here’s what to do:

Call Pantone (US only) at 1-866-726-8663 and then choose “1″ for customer service and explain your problem. The consumer version doesn’t have the full set of colors as the pro version, but if the color and page number is noted in the index and that page is missing from your book then you should return it. This will work only if you bought your Shopping Guide directly f rom Pantone, but as far as I can tell their resellers don’t sell the consumerer fanbook anyway.

McCall’s 5525 – Solved Technical Difficulties of a Different Sort

coudremode — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Left: Bernina foot, 20mm wide. Right: Willcox & Gibbs foot, 8mm wide

When Ann gave me this Willcox & Gibbs industrial it came with some good stuff; there were several needles (industrial machine needles are different from home machine needles) a spare belt (no servos here its belt driven), a few rather scary looking watch-those-fingers feet (see right, the regular one is just 8mm wide), a special wrench and the thread stand. However, one crucial thing missing was a manual, and as every sewer knows a used sewing machine needs its manual as much as a used car does. And one thing I could not seem to figure out with this old beauty was how to change the stitch length.

It had been set at 8 stitches per inch when I got it and for the life of me I could not get it to reset. Now mind you, this is not a complicated machine, its entirely mechanical; it does only a lockstitch and can’t even go in reverse. It really has no external features other than a small box built into the front for oil and a silver button below a tiny window that notes the stitch lengths per inch. So how hard could it be to change the stitch length? Well, without a manual for guidance it really was like looking for a needle in a haystack. First I tried to figure it out on my own and got nowhere. Then I called the guys at Reliable Sewing Machine who serviced it; Bill read me the stitch length instructions over the phone but it made no sense at all. Then I called Ann, thinking I could ask her for the number of the woman who gave her the machine, but she called me back and said, “Phyl, I wish I could but she’s dead!” So much for that idea.

Finally I get on the Internet, start googling and up comes 301,000 hits for Willcox & Gibbs. I learned a lot. The company was in business from 1857 to 1973 as a sewing machine manufacturer. They had several showrooms in the US and Europe, in Boston they were at 363 Boylston Street, a tony address even today. In 1973 they sold the sewing machine business to Pfaff; but they still exist as Rexel Inc. a company that distributes lighting and electrical components. Most of what I found for information about their sewing machines pertained to their highly collectible Victorian era machines or were links to used sergers from the 70′s that are still sold in the secondary market. Finally, after trolling through 7 pages of hits I found a promising PDF from a Smithsonian on-line collection of industrial trade literature. There was quite a bit of Willcox & Gibbs material and one file was labeled “Manual for high speed industrial lockstitch machine”. I opened up the PDF and sure enough the machine looks like a simpler version of my industrial! And its almost identical too, the only thing it doesn’t have is the auto-lubricating box on the front. Here is the instruction for changing the stitch length:

The silver reset button and the window with the stitch length number are to the left of the wheel. The box below holds oil.

“TO CHANGE THE STITCH – Turn Hand Wheel and press Button until it snaps in. Then for a shorter stitch (higher number) turn top of Hand Wheel toward you; for a longer stitch (lower number) turn it from you until in either case the sititch number desired is shown in recess above. Then release Button.”

Did you get all that? There is a pop quiz at the end…

After two tries and much grunting I figured it out. There is a indeed a “Button”, there is a indeed a “recess” and the wheel did turn and the stitch length number did change. Then I ran some fabric through – viola – 34 stitches per inch! I learned a few other things too; my machine is mucholder than I thought, the Smithsonian manual is dated 1928 so that makes it approximately 81 years old. It runs at 4200 stitches per minute; my 2002 Bernina 180 does 880 per minute. The table and the motor are newer than the head; the motor is General Electric, the transmitter is Consew and the table is labeled Singer on the treadle. But it still works. The only strange thing about it is the smell; when it heats up my sewing room fills with the odor of old sewing machine oil.

So I can finish up my coat now; although the buttonholes will need to wait until my Bernina comes back from the shop.