Monday, August 3, 2009

Round the bend

I did something fun this morning and I wanted to share!
Have I mentioned that I LOVE my twin needle? There she is. Ready to rock.

I am working on these shorts for Logan's birthday. All of the topstitching is done with a twin needle, but there are several corners on the patch that are topstitched. I had read in Sandra Betzina's Power Sewing about a method to pivot a twin needle, and here is my chance to try it out. It worked great! So, I'm going to show you how to do it, too.
Start with your needle in the fabric, as you would to pivot with a single needle. Drop your feed dogs, as if you were doing free motion work (you sort of are!). If you forget to drop your feed dogs, you will have a mess of tangled thread.
Turning the handwheel toward you (always forward!), allow the needles to just clear the fabric. The feed dogs are down, so your fabric shouldn't be moving here. Turn the fabric slightly in the direction you are pivoting and with the handwheel, advance the needle with the inner needle reentering the original hole and the outer needle moving a millimeter or two in the direction of the pivot. Continue this process, keeping the inner needle in the same hole, until you are pivoted all the way around.
Now you are ready to go forward again! To clear the 45ish degree angle above it took me about 5 passes.
Here is how it looks on the outside.
And on the wrong side, you end up with a little starburst, fan-y thing. I think it is kind of pretty.

2 comments:

Varina said...

I was just reading about double needles and wondered how they work with the bobbin, I guess they zigzag between the needles, which makes sense.

Stephanie said...

thanks so much for the info. I have been wondering how to do that, but never would have thought to lower the feed dogs. thank you thank you thank you! *smile*