1 length of sewing down, ~17 to go*.

Z is swearing about removing tape and in contemplating g-clamps.
Edit: and is now using a rolling pin.

And I have fun sewing straight lines with a sewing machine...

*NB ~2 or maybe 3 lengths of stitching per seam. Some of these are 8.1 m long. The taping and seam setup takes longer than the sewing.

When they work, gods industrial sewing machines are glorious ( Read more... )

So, geteld workshop tent is now in one piece with all the main machining other than the hem done. This is good and feels far more tent-like than in pieces scattered over the lounge floor. However the piece is now larger than the lounge floor or at least wont fit easily spread out, so we wait til daylight hours to take it out the back and line ( Read more... )

So, viking bed is now able to be slotted together - next stage is to drill the holes for pegging and make the wedges. Mucked up a bit on the slat spacing - slightly too large a gap at the ends, but can cope with that, or fix later if it gets too annoying ( Read more... )

Ok, 3 hours (DVD 1 of FotR with director commentry, and ABC news), ~50cm of interlocked seam done by hand (2 needles going concurrently, 1 awl). And a sore neck ( Read more... )

That 3/4 tent seam is now hand finished. Might be able to get one or two more done the same way.
You can definitely understand why they invented awls. Real work though - but only on the inside.

The AGB star abundance paper has now been submitted with MNRAS - what I was mainly working on in my previous employment. Fingers crossed the reviewer wont hack, slash and acid bath it or outright reject it ( Read more... )

An unexpected drop in by Z on the way out of town - yay. Lunch and an attempt at a seam after a sewing machine oiling that looked like it made it much happier. Thread breaks if go too fast (the left one - possibly a tensioning issue, but the threads are balanced at present...- think it is the thread skipping and catching on things at variable ( Read more... )

Insert noises of grinding teeth and having spoken too soon about "only" having 4 seams to go. Insert mutterings as needles skip and it looks like machine needs oiling, leastwise she isn't running smoothly. Insert wonderings about where to put the oil - model obscure enought that never did manage to find any sort on manual online. Insert not getting ( Read more... )

I am really looking forward to sewing that doesn't involve a harpoon, pliers and very heavy canvas. But the tent pieces have all had end threads dealt with (including all those in the middle of seams, though that is a whole 'nother story), leaving 4 large interlocking seams to be done this evening for the tent to be in the prerequisit 2 pieces. At ( Read more... )