This is so interesting. I got a book on making costumes some months ago, and have started to learn how to sew recently, as a middle-aged man with no prior experience (aside from maybe sewing a button back on). It's all new to me.
My wife does not like the fiddly, precise parts involved in the process; as a programmer, I expect I can do that well. Other things -- like the machine running too fast, no matter how I push the pedal -- look like they'll mostly be solved with experience (and possibly better gear).
A couple other observations:
- I've been fairly happy learning from resources geared to women and girls, although I must admit I find most of the projects uninteresting.
- It was delightful to find a book on making backpacks and rugged items. I was surprised that it was nice to see a man doing sewing; I didn't think it mattered much to, well, see someone like you doing something.
- I remember seeing a tweet that said something like, "I'll know the library wants to really support making when I can send a kid there to ask to use the digital embroidery machine much as they might ask to use a 3D printer."
Folks here might be interested to know that there's a fairly recent technique of using a projector to show a pattern, at a 1-to-1 size, on a cutting mat so you can cut it out and make it. Way easier than printing a bunch of pages and taping them together.
Sewing is on the spectrum of all the other making processes we like to do — metal, wood, etc. It’s just that measurement accuracy/tolerance is appalling compared to what we’d expect from working with wood or metal. Especially as you get into lighter fabrics closer to clothing than bags.
I have several sewing machines, ranging from a 60yo Swiss post-bed to a modern Juki walking foot. These things can last forever. However if you buy one, assuming you aren’t master seamstress, I highly recommend replacing old clutch motors with a servo motor that also includes “needle positioning” sensor. This enables you to sew at a sane speed and keep the needle where you want it when making corners etc.
It’s also good to have a proper servicing guy come and tune up the machine and get the right tensioning and timing. Unless you have a lot of experience you can get wildly off piste trying to get tensions set if you’re inexperienced.
Leatherworker.net has a sewing machine sub forum that seems to have some decent experts on industrial strength machine questions.
Being able to repair and modify my clothes, and even make some items from scratch, is something I consider to be a cornerstone of frugality and self-reliance.
As the very first thing, I make sure to buy clothes that are of good quality and well-constructed, both because they last better and because they will be easier to repair. I like clothes that can move from office wear to casual wear to outdoor/rough wear, as they ages and repairs accumulate.
As I've gotten older, I've started appreciating dress shirts, sports jackets and higher-waisted pants, for their comfort and practicality. What Neil from RMC on YouTube usually wears is a good example of what I've grown to like. A great benefit is that this is appropriate office wear, and can be dressed down as casual as you like.
Even clothes that are beyond repair can be used as patches to repair other items. I also maintain a decent supply of buttons and zippers, harvested from completely broken or worn out clothes. You never know when you'll need a button or other spare part.
Agree. I bought one a few months ago, and it's been a lot of fun to use. As everyone else, I already have a lot of basic stuff at home to deal with small repairs and DIYs: screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, scissors, various kinds of glue, etc. Why should I be at a loss when it comes to textiles, which are a big part of the materials I use in my daily life? It just doesn't make sense. From clothes, to furniture, to toys, there's a lot of stuff you can build with a sewing machine.
I'm terrible at sewing, and rarely do it, but I own a sewing machine to mend clothes and repair other things.
The thing that's really fantastic is that you can f
(fairly) easily find a beautiful, used sewing machine for around $50. The workmanship on these things can be incredible! It's worth getting one just to check out the mechanisms.
Honestly, I think that basic sewing is an important skill, up there with basic car repair and basic carpentry, etc...
Haha yes, I have been around sewing machines all my life, but my boyfriend always gets so exited to see the inside of the machine and learn about the mechanisms when I need help troubleshooting.
I think that the main thing that I have learned from sewing machines when I was young is daring to open machines and trying to troubleshoot it myself. With these machines a lot ga go wrong but most of it is easy to fix.
Also, I’m not sure how to name it, great 2D to 3D intuition? After a lot of patterns you get great intuition in how you can bend, fold and connect flat shapes to make things in 3D. It is much more commonly applicable than it sounds, and helps me visualize things better.
Assuming that you're buying a used machine, one way to get an idea is by weight -- generally the better machines are heavy because they use all metal construction. Also you can get an idea by going by feel -- do the various mechanisms feel smooth when used?
But, in general, google is your friend when it comes to choosing specific models.
I usually see great used sewing machines at swap meets, garage sales, and thrift stores, so that's what I'd recommend. I'm sure there are others that can give better advice. Maybe some relatives have a sewing machine stashed away somewhere? Local sewing groups?
Weight looks like a great easy way to quickly asses something. Much better than a bunch of models with years that are good before the MBA type sold out the brand name for a quick buck.
Like many males, I'm sartorially challenged. When I was a teenager, even my father had to take me aside to tell me that getting around like a hobo when in 'good' company or going out wasn't the best of ideas (my mother had long given up). Later, the Army had ways of forcing the issue which were very effective (the training not only sank in but also it's stuck and withstood the test of time). It also taught us all how to use a needle-and-thread to do minor repairs and to sew buttons back on (but I already knew this as I'd had to do it many times when I was a kid).
So why my interest in sewing machines? Well, nowadays it's more a pragmatic/practical interest as they're rather useful to even someone like me. When I was a kid, I'd use my mother's sewing machine to sew all sorts of stuff such as cardboard and thin sheets of plastic for my experiments when my mother wasn't looking (meaning that she was away from home whenever I used it). If she had caught me then I've have been in deep shit. (I need to add my that mother was a whiz at making clothes; she even made some of her best going-out attire and it was excellent, so her sewing machine was her pride-and-joy—not something for number one son to smash, that being a 'skill' of which I was exceeding good at.)
Little wonder then that she always knew whenever I'd been at it, but (to my knowledge) she never knew what tortures I'd put the machine through†. It seems her not knowing the details softened things a bit. Somehow, the forensic evidence was always the tension knob, it seems no matter how hard I tried to set it back in the position where she'd left it I never quite managed it. I reckon there was other stuff too, such as the position of threads and the amount of cotton in the shuttle but I always restocked that back to how I found it.
Now to the present. In this liberated age, I have been completely unsuccessful in getting women in my life to even go shopping with me for clothes so that I look respectable let alone repairing and mending my torn and thread-worn stuff (I am however the fortunate owner of many extremely well knitted pullovers, apparently that's an interest or a hobby and the sewing machine is not). So these days I've the machine all to myself—and I can now sew anything on it I like including cardboard (right, I still use it for stitching all sorts of odd things).
I can't say that I enjoy repairing and mending clothes, in fact, I'll put off doing it until I really have to. That said, I can make a pretty good job of it from the fact that I'd become somewhat expert on my mother's machine decades ago. Taking up jeans and other pants—no problem (you'd never know it wasn't factory-done); making properly-stitched buttonholes—no problem (I'm now expert at replacing that damn Velcro that clogs up in the wash with fluff and becomes useless with real buttons); inserting patches—no problem (I can even match the insert so that it all but looks invisible except close up), and I can even repair pockets and extent their depth.
The things I can't do or won't do unless I'm really desperate—i.e.: when the shops are shut and I can't buy another pair and such—are replacing fly zips and letting out and taking in pants' wastes. They're jobs that are too fiddly and time-consuming, I've not the patience to first tack things up then readjust where necessary. In summary, it's useful skill that all males ought to know these days given that our partners usually will tell us to go take a jump if we ask them to do it. Moreover, it's all the more important that we just don't throw away clothes at the first sign of wear and tear due to environmental reasons (growing cotton is hugely demanding on resources, especially water—remember the Aral Sea catastrophe?).
As for sewing machines themselves, I reckon they're truly wonderful ingenious mechanical contraptions (and that includes overlockers which I've also used). Their invention by
Elias Howe and others has to be one of the greatest of all time given the millions upon millions of hour's toil they have saved over the last one and half plus centuries.
It seems to me that with the ever-increasing environmental crisis from growing fiber, that the not-so-humble sewing machine ought to make a comeback and again take pride-of-place in our homes as it did in our grandmothers' day.
† When in primary school, I accidentally happened to smash one of the peddle-driven sewing machines that the girls in my class trained on (fortunately, it was a coed school). When not in use the machines were lined up along a corridor wall and one day I decided to show other boys how fast I could peddle one—a skill well practiced on my grandmother's machine without incident. Anyway, at full revs the cast iron peddle snapped and broke away from its connecting rod with an almighty bang. All the onlooking boys scattered and did disappearing acts in record time leaving me with much egg on my face so to speak.
My wife does not like the fiddly, precise parts involved in the process; as a programmer, I expect I can do that well. Other things -- like the machine running too fast, no matter how I push the pedal -- look like they'll mostly be solved with experience (and possibly better gear).
A couple other observations:
- I've been fairly happy learning from resources geared to women and girls, although I must admit I find most of the projects uninteresting.
- It was delightful to find a book on making backpacks and rugged items. I was surprised that it was nice to see a man doing sewing; I didn't think it mattered much to, well, see someone like you doing something.
- I remember seeing a tweet that said something like, "I'll know the library wants to really support making when I can send a kid there to ask to use the digital embroidery machine much as they might ask to use a 3D printer."
Folks here might be interested to know that there's a fairly recent technique of using a projector to show a pattern, at a 1-to-1 size, on a cutting mat so you can cut it out and make it. Way easier than printing a bunch of pages and taping them together.