Sunday, March 4, 2012

Special Tools and The Bunny

I often make or improvise my own tools for the sewing room. I figured I show one to you today that I use often. I often try to use embroidery thread on my sewing machine and sometimes doesn’t work because the spools are too big and heavy. My go-to machine (an older Necchi that I loooooooooooooooove) has a thread holder in the vertical position and the embroidery spools don’t spin like say, a smaller Coats and Clark spools would. The thread gets pulled super tight and then usually breaks. So I created this little guy so the thread would be taken off the spool from the top instead. No pulling, no broken threads.

All that it takes to make it is a stout piece of wire (mine is copper) and a wooden block. I drill a hole in the wooden block, push the wire into it and voila. A new sewing tool. This one just sits on top of my machine and pulls the thread up and then I thread the machine like normal. (Pardon the window, we are still in progress with the house remodel)
bunny_4

 

Here’s the complete picture. I use this guy for a lot of things. I have really large spools of embroidery thread in black and white that don’t fit in my embroidery machine. I do the same thing except, I put the wire/wood do-hicky in my thread rack above the machine. It does the same thing there.
bunny_3

 

 

Like I said in my last post, I’ve been making jammies for little people. I used a pattern from Urban Threads called Happy Bunny. It’s cute isn’t it? They have the best embroidery over there don’t they? I thought I’d show you how I use my zipper foot to get really accurate results on stitching around said bunny. I first embroidery this design on wool felt. Now I’m attaching it to the front of the shirt.
bunny_1bunny_2

 

 

Cute, eh? This is a very happy bunny. I pin the crap out of it knowing it’ll shift around while I’m going around it with the sewing machine. When you pin stuff like this, make sure you pin it horizontally as well as vertically. That way, it can’t shift in any direction.
bunny_5

I should be done with the whole outfit in a day or two to show you.

2 comments:

Toby Wollin said...

OMG - I was just thinking about a little tool to fit on top of my sewing machine and there it is!!! Brilliant!

Russell said...

Groovy! How do you keep the block from falling off? I am a Necchi fan, too. I use a BF Nova in a treadle for most of my work, one daughter has the same BU and another daughter has a Nora.
I have tried those spools with much disaster...