Haven't done much sewing recently, been busy with my gardening business, the weather has been kind to me until this week. So seeing it rained on Wednesday had a date with my Singer 201K.
I was given a fabric sample book which I took apart and cut the fabric (upholstery) into squares. Ended up with a considerable pile of squares.
The fabric was very good quality retailing at around £50 per metre. Some of it was heavyweight fabric, the linens had an open weave, a few frayed badly, all of which is totally different to my normal cotton quilting fabric. Made them up into 9 patch squares to make into a quilt. I used a fake suede type fabric for the sashing which again was a fairly thick. It was tricky to put together as some of the fabric squares moved around, especially the thick pile ones. The Singer coped fairly well even when I added the fake suede sashing. Added some wadding and cotton sprig backing.
Then the fun started, the 201K has hardened steel gears so is a very strong machine and boy, I needed that strength.
Please note that I do not recommend that you trying sewing stuff like this on a normal modern machine, especially if it has plastic gears. My other vintage Singer 327K wouldn't have been strong enough to sew this and that has metal gears. So be really careful, I once broke an Elna by trying to sew a thick horse rug.
I used a walking foot and Size 16 needle (which was the thickest one I had), I still had to ease the fabric through the machine, it was really tough, some of the thick seams pushed the foot across so my quilting lines are far from straight. The quilt is heavy had to keep the weight on the table so that it didn't drag the quilt sideways through the machine. It was the trickiest quilt I have ever done, glad I didn't make it larger. Used the backing material to bind the edges. Lucky the weather had cooled down as its an extremely warm quilt to have on your lap while sewing the binding on
So pleased with my heavyweight, not sure if I would make another one I was pushing my luck with my machine, I think this was the limit of what it could cope with
Oh, the fabric book had a really strong back cover on it so I made it into a patchwork design board by covering one side with wadding and finishing the edges with a matching bias binding which was glued on.
The back is a fake leather.
Cheers
Sharon
