So my mother in law brought my wife a singer sewing machine. I soon as I saw it visions of an affordable beautiful pearl white tuck n'roll interior for my 50 ford danced in my head. Is that possible with this machine, or do I need a larger industrial machine for the heavier vinyl. Someone said I just need a heavy duty needle. I have never sewn in my life so I know some practice is due. But I would love to hear some tips or suggestions or see some pics on how to pull this off from someone who's done it before, professional or amateur.
okay, of the two classes you mentioned (professional and amateur) i DEFINITELY fall in the latter, so really i'm just bumping this to the top until skipstitch or fatlucky's see it however, i do have a cheapie sewing machine at home which i am DAMN good at making stupid costumes for parties with (trust me boys it works a treat, if ya get my drift)... i also know a guy that repairs and builds custom industrial sewing machines for a living, and i've had a chance to use some pretty wild machines. you could sew through two layers of vinyl, maybe three, with a standard sewer. it's possible... it'll be, however, a total bastard! once you've seen a REAL sewing machine go you'll understand. my home machine will sew through 4 or 5 layers of thin cloth before you risk snapping needles, or the stitch goes wandering. a relatively old, rebuilt machine at my mates place happily sewed THIRTY TWO LAYERS! it's seriously different... my suggestion would be (and this is in fact exactly what i'm doing now), practice making stuff on the singer, a minibike seat, a cool chair, a couch made out of the back of a car... whatever. when you can sew and you know you enjoy it and you know you can do an interior, spend the money on a real sewing machine and do it. the price of a decent second hand industrial sewer is a tenth of the price of getting a professionally done interior, and you can say "i did it", which is the magic words of hotrodding, really...
I bought a used machine thinging that I could do my interior & found out that sewing isn't that easy!! Theres alot to do with material thickness, thread tension, etc.but its not rocket science either.Take a "basic" course at nite school or from someone & you'll get good pretty fast.One thing about sewing is that if you fuck it up you can just cut out the stitches & try again!!If you cut the material wrong, you're screwed!! Also tuck & roll isn't just running a stitch every inch or so, the material has to be rolled & then filled, it's alittle weird how its done.Peterson has an older book on "building a street rod" & they have apretty good section on how to sew it. you defenitly can save a ton of money doing oit yourself. JimV
Hey Daren, start off slow, with a simple project like a fender cover, don't want to scratch that primer . Make a few pillows for the over night trips, just to get used to the machine. You'll know real quick what she'll pull. I think the bigest problem with a home machine is the feeding. On a home machine the bottom is just feeding the material, on a heavy duty or commerical one the bottom and top Foot (walking foot) both feed. If you help the feed and go slow and almost work the machine by hand , you can go threw a bit more layers. You can cheat, by making pleats with just a stich and some foam with a backer.
I agree with everybody else- do some little practice projects to learn how to use the machine and to see what your machine can and can't handle. Don't be too surprised if it can't sew through 3 or 4 layers of vinyl. Mrs. Fatlucky's makes purses, and she's always out in the shop using my sewing machine, because hers won't do a decent stitch on 2 layers of vinyl. If you decide you still want to do your interior, I did a tuck 'n' roll how to once upon a time. I think it's saved at Zeke's HAMBer chat.
I tried it once years ago... The machine sewed the stuff and I was able to manually pull it through the places like corners where it has to go through six layers of vinyl, but the "home" machine makes the stitches too close together and the tension couldn't be adjusted loose enough to make a proper stitch without being so tight that in a matter of weeks it was cutting through the material and the whole job just went to hell in a sewing basket. And it was a newish Singer machine which my Mom claimed "never worked right again" It will probably sew a cloth interior just fine, which may be why "tweed" interiors became so popular...They are garage friendly! Never thought I'd find a legit reason in support of "tweed", OH MY!
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