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About Sewing on Vinyl


The top handbag is my most recent piece of art. LOL.   Sewing on "marine vinyl" is not for the weak hearted. I had to "google" every trick in the book. You need to understand some of the basics of Vinyl before you start a project. I'm telling you this because I started the project before I knew.....which is typical of all of my projects.

First, let me just say that vinyl is sticky and does not like to feed forward. It sticks and refuses to move without feeding with your hand from the back side and pulling from the other hand from the inside. Plus, after much research.....I learned that you must get a teflon foot which helps to feed the material through. You can also tape your foot with scotch tape-but the teflon foot was like 3.00 and well worth it.

You will also want to do some trials on some pieces of the fabric (vinyl) that you are going to use to test out the tension and stitch length.

Apparently, the weight of your thread is important, and you want to use a heavy cotton thread for this type of project. I did not really get into this part and still I had some tension issues.

FORGET about pressing your seams with vinyl. It is not going to happen. There is no trick. So you need to think about that before you begin a project.  What was really difficult about the top left purse was that it required top stitching. It took me 30 minutes to pull the entire top of the purse/lining through for top stitching. I love the outcomes, but I want to learn more about how to make this project easier. I have some canvas waiting for some heavy duty lime green vinyl. Don't know if I'm scared or challenged. LOL

Comments

Miss Zeglin said…
The end result looks great. A friend bought a really cool looking vinyl bag at a craft show and it totally feel apart. However, these bags look really study. I do have some vinyl, but I'm having problems with my Singer. I'm only sewing straight and I'm still having issues. Happy sewing.
12:16 PM
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