My first project

After I bought my machine and had it sitting on my dining room table I was hot to trot. I wanted to make something. Trouble was, I didn't know where to begin.

At the fabric stores I had picked up several remnants. I still remembered what those were, fortunately, and figured using remnants was one way to get into this world again relatively cheaply and to try different types of fabrics. Thus I had several different types of fabric that I hoped I could learn to use.

I settled on a couple of table mats. I wanted to make mats that had pockets for fork, knife, and spoon, that I could roll up and bring with me on the road. I am creating an "emergency travel kit" that will allow me to make meals in motel rooms with easily-obtained ingredients, a microwave, and a refrigerator. I could visualize these place mats on a round table in a motel.

I had two fabrics that looked complementary. One was a vinyl oil-cloth-like fabric, white with red dots. Cute. The other was a red print. I had bias tape in a wide red that looked good with the two. I used a straw place mat as a pattern, cut out rectangles from both fabrics using this pattern. I then cut out additional small rectangles of the vinyl fabric that looked a good size for the pockets.

I started with the pockets. I used a red thread and standard universal kind of needle and presser foot. I hemmed a pocket rectangle all around and then sewed it to one of the larger vinyl rectangles. I just eyeballed all of this, did not do any lining up. Then I sewed two large rectangles, one vinyl, the other cotton, together, wrong sides together, using the bias tape. I figured out a way to turn the corners, didn't do too badly. Here is the result:



Well, yeah, it's rough but it's pretty cute and it does the job. I then started on placemat number two. This time I ran into trouble. The sewing started jamming up and I broke the needle.

I looked into my manual, which is a decent piece of work, and learned that the problem was likely the presser foot, that I should be using the "no-stick" foot. The vinyl was sticking to the standard foot. Fortunately, this machine comes with a bunch of presser feet so I did not have to run out and buy one. I learned how to change feet (easy) and got it done. And that was, indeed, the problem. No problems sewing place mat no. 2 after that.

I also, of course, learned how to change the needle and I got additional experience threading the machine, so the entire project was a good learning experience.