Canvas repair do-it-yourself

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PatSea

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I know there are several of you who have made your own canvas or have done your own canvas repair. I'm about to try my hand at repairing my bimini and am looking for some helpful hints. I just bought a 1946 Singer model 66 machine. It seems to be in very good condition with no rust or wear. A real engineering piece! My wife tried it out by sewing and it seemed to sew OK. It has all the original attachments, the original instruction booklet, the original oil can and tube of motor grease!
Do any of you have any experience with this machine?
I understand we should use a #18 needle? We bought special thread from Sailrite.
Do we use a long thread length?
Any other suggestions?
 
I used a similar but older Singer machine to make a complete camper cover for my boat. My only advice is to sew a bunch of test pieces and play around with the thread tension before you start your real piece. It will take you a while to get the tension right. When it is wrong you will get a large mass of excess thread loops on the back of the canvas. Stitch length should be about 1/8 inch (try to match a sample of an existing piece of canvas).

Best advice is to listen to what your wife has to say. Ignoring her will mean that you will be learning how to sew by yourself.

Mike
 
quote:
Originally posted by meide

Best advice is to listen to what your wife has to say. Ignoring her will mean that you will be learning how to sew by yourself.

Mike

Click to expand...
Probly not the only thing you will be doing by yourself also [:-eyebrows]
 
quote:
Originally posted by meide

.......... Best advice is to listen to what your wife has to say. Ignoring her will mean that you will be learning how to sew by yourself.
Click to expand...


Not everyone's wife knows how to sew. If one person in the family knows how to sew, it would be far simpler to have that person do the sewing.

Hint: Buy a book on sewing. Read it. Read it again. Skip over the chapters on buttonholes and decorative stitching, but study the parts about seams, hems, and setting up the machine.

Practice on some scraps of the material you will be using.
 
The first part of the project has been completed with excellent results. We (oops - my wife) repaired the rear top piece of our bimini that we had brought home. The machine worked flawlessly, but of course a lot of the credit goes to my wife who is an experienced seamstress. The Singer 66 machine is amazing. I was playing around with it and it sewed through 5 thicknesses of heavy canvas-like material with no problems, and the stitching was perfect. Tomorrow we are bringing the machine to our boat to repair the front part of the bimini.
I figure it was a good investment - we paid $50 for the machine, $4 for some repair canvas material, spent about 3 hours of time, and probably saved ourselves $200 in repair costs.
 
Mike - You mentioned that you used an older Singer. Is 1970's model strong enough to handle some minor repair work?

Lady C
 
Repairs are pretty much straight forward, follow the old thread holes. My wife just remade some zip in panels for our boat. These were all new materials and our Singer 500A struggled a lot with it. We had to go down to a smaller thread because it couldn't handle the tension from the sunbrella thread going through the plastic & binding tape.

IMG_1782.jpg


We have the walking foot attachment but didn't use it this time. We now have a new appreciation for those guys like Mike who do this for a living. There's real talent & sill involved.
 
quote:
Originally posted by oneillch

Mike - You mentioned that you used an older Singer. Is 1970's model strong enough to handle some minor repair work?

Lady C

Click to expand...


What you need to know is the model number of the machine, not the vintage. Once you have that, do som research on the Internet. There's a lot of information on sewing machines.

The one I bought is a model 201 made in 1938. It is straight stitch only and has a direct (gear) drive motor.

Once I got it cleaned up and adjusted, I liked it so much that I bought an antique cabinet and bench for it and it now proudly sits in the bedroom as a piece of furniture.
 
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