What’s on your bench? Mine’s mainly full of electronic test equipment, soldering kit, as well as computers. I’m an electronic engineer by trade when I’m not composing for Hackaday, so that’s barely surprising. possibly yours is like mine, or perhaps you’ve added a 3D printer to the mix, a lot of woodworking tools, or perhaps power tools.

So that’s my bench. however is it my only bench? On the other side of the space from the electronics bench is a durable folding dining table that homes the tools as well as supplies of my other bench. I’m most likely not alone in having much more than one bench for different activities, certainly like numerous of you I likewise have a untidy bench somewhere else for dismantling parts of 1960s cars, or making clay ovens.

My textile bench, with a choice of the devices utilized on it.
The other bench in concern though is not for untidy work, in truth the diametric opposite. This is my textile bench, as well as it homes the different stitching machines as well as other devices that enable me to deal with all kind of jobs including fabric. On it I’ve made, modified, as well as repaired all kind of clothing, I’ve made not-very-successful kites, passable sandals, as well as adventurous camping tent styles among numerous other projects.

Some of you may question why my textile bench is Hackaday fodder, besides it’s most likely risk-free to presume that few visitors have ever thought about fabricating their own taffeta sphere gown. however to concentrate only on one element of textile work misses the point, since the prospective is there for so much cross-over between these different threads of the maker world. So I’m going to take you with my textile bench as well as introduce you to its primary tools. With luck this will demystify a few of them, as well as perhaps motivate you to have a go.

Hand tools as well as Measurement

You may expect this short article to head directly for the device tools, the stitching machines. however they are only part of the picture, as well as it is exactly how the rest of the tools that surround them are utilized that makes the difference between textile success as well as failure.

First up are my collection of scissors as well as shears. I have three pairs, a huge orange handled set of material shears for cutting fabric, a set of typical domestic scissors for cutting pattern pieces as well as other paper, as well as a set of small scissors for getting into little areas for snipping thread or similar. These ought to be taken care of, in specific the material shears. Blunt or damaged shears can damage your fabric, so woe betide anybody who picks up mine as well as cuts anything however material with them.

My stitch ripper. extremely helpful tool, it covers up for my mistakes.
The smallest as well as most likely the most affordable tool on my textile bench is my stitch ripper. This is a combination of hook, spike, as well as knife, which is like a universal delete button for textilists. With it you can unpick seams, either to dismantle an product for remodeling or many likely, to undo your inevitable mistakes. This as well as the shears truly are the tools you have to hand the most on your textile bench.

The metrology demands of a textilist are less demanding than those of an electronic engineer, so the closest thing to an instrument on my textile bench is a material tape measure. Why a material one, you ask? envision having a measurement taken with a chilly spring steel engineer’s tape measure. suddenly from an engineering point of view I do my textile measurements in inches rather than millimetres, they seem to be the system of option in the field.

Sundries as well as Consumables

In the photo above, you’ll see a variety of sundries as well as consumables. minor elements of your project, or little parts utilized in their construction. many apparent are the pins, I have a pincushion full of dressmaker’s pins, each about an inch long with a little plastic sphere on one end. Pins are the universal fixer of textile work, they are utilized to hold whatever in location precisely as it ought to be before sewing. I’ll therefore commonly have a piece of work with a great deal of them in at once, as well as have to be cautious to eliminate them afterwards. In the situation of pinned-together seams, the pins are eliminated anyway as you feed them into your stitching machine.

As for consumables, you’ll discover elastic, iron-on interfacing — like a stick-on material stiffener as well as support, repair work tape, as well as a box of spools of thread in my workbox. There is likewise a box of stitching device bobbins prepared packed with different coloured threads, as well as since I have two stitching machines of vastly different ages I have to keep two different bobbin sizes.

Sewing Machines as well as Overlockers

Cue a comment thread about plastic gears…
Having dealt with the little stuff, we come to the machines. I have a couple of stitching machines as well as an overlocker, which are each utilized for doing seams to join material in their own specific way.

My primary stitching device is a contemporary singer domestic machine. It has been mine for a number of years now, it has a fundamental computerized administration of a significant variety of specialized stitches, as well as with it I’ve developed all kind of projects. I’ve talked in the past about choosing a stitching device for your bench whatsoever levels, however I can suggest a similar daily contemporary device as a workhorse if you can pay for it.

From a time when you had to be a weightlifter to own a stitching machine.
The other stitching device on my bench is a vintage singer from the 1950s, a 201K. It does only one stitch, a directly line, however it does that much better as well as much more robustly than practically any type of device you might discover today. It is developed to a common that exceeds that of numerous contemporary durable or industrial machines, as well as in truth that is what I utilize it for. It comes out for leather, footwear, canvas, tentage, awnings, or other jobs the domestic device would struggle over.

A 201K does nevertheless evaluate as much as a little battleship, as well as is not a device for the faint-hearted to move.

The final device on my textile bench is a Janome overlocker. If you are unfamiliar with an overlocker, believe of it as a device for producing seams as well as completing them such that they don’t fray. When you just sew two pieces of material together with a single line of stitching as well as without any type of methods to safeguard the edge, the cut edge of the material has nothing to protected it, as well as therefore its weaving starts to find apart. The overlocker avoids this by prolonging a stitch over the cut edge from above as well as below, in impact protecting the cut edge. You can see this clearly in the accompanying picture, on the left is a fraying seam edge finished with the Singer, on the best an overlocked one from the Janome.

Overlocker

Fraying edge versus overlock edge

This performance includes the trade-off of an overlocker being a much much more complex device than a simple stitching machine. It has four spools of thread as well as two needles which are rather much more complex to set up, as well as it has an oscillating knife blade which cuts a directly edge on the fabric.

An overlocker is most likely not something you will discover on the second-hand market as easily as you would a stitching machine, they are not such a ubiquitous piece of domestic devices that everybody’s mom or grandma would have had. nevertheless if you have the possibility to pick one up cheaply or you can pay for to purchase a new one then they are extremely much worth the effort, this is a device that will take your textile work to the next level.

There is one final piece of textile devices that doesn’t sit on my bench, it’s just as well huge for that. A tailor’s dummy is an incredibly helpful tool, a human-shaped former onto which you can pin material or pattern pieces to produce shapes in 3D. I utilize mine for adjusting the in shape of part-built garments, as a former to get the shape I requirement when taking something in, as well as for laying pieces of tracing paper to produce my own patterns. It was an enabling moment for my textile work, taking me off the 2D table as well as into the third dimension enabled me to get to grips with my own patterns in a method I had never done before.

One size, fits only me.
If you are searching for a tailor’s dummy, you may be lucky sufficient to discover one second-hand. function developed ones are adjustable across a variety of sizes as well as are not precisely affordable when purchased new, however thankfully if all you will ever requirement is one size there is a affordable alternative. My tailor’s dummy is a fake one produced from broadened polystyrene with a material cover for shop window displays, these are offered in a variety of sizes as well as don’t expense a significant amount. Mine came from Amazon, as well as expense me around £20 ($25).

All this devices represents a relatively well-equipped textile bench, It takes up rather a great deal of space, as well as I haven’t even shown you the boxes including my stocks of random materials or patterns. If you have an rate of interest in textiles you don’t have to purchase all the devices shown here, this represents the accumulated result of rather a few years. however if you take a look at the hand tools as well as consumables then pair them with a serviceable domestic stitching device you ought to be equipped to deal with many textile builds, as well as it needn’t expense an arm as well as a leg. even if it may in some cases cover them.