I know nothing about sewing machines, but have a need for a few odd sized bags for a couple of bikes. I am often hand stitching repairs on clothes as well so thought a machine might be a good idea.

I think the most important requirement I have is that it must be able to go through webbing for the bag mounting. Other than that price is all I care about. It’s not going to have a hard life and i’m happy taking things apart to fix them.

What brand or even models should I be looking at?

The upholstery department where I work always go on about Bernina machines. That’s all I know.

They also have industrial machines but I guess you’re just looking for a compact machine.

When we were looking for Mrs njee20 about 5 years ago I was drawn to Singer (as I’d heard of them), turns out someone bought the name a few years ago and the newer ‘Singer’ machines are shit, so avoid them. She ended up with a Brother machine which she likes, it’ll do denim, which seems to be the qualifier for “this is pretty sturdy”.

I’d go for something older from Jones, Singer or Brother – my mum has had one very similar to this since the early 70’s and it’s made curtains, sheepskin and leather coats, repaired tents and rucksacks and made me look a fool in slightly dodgy hand made clothes all through primary school without missing a beat.

As a contrast I broke mrs MikeG’s £130 modern singer thing modifying the sides of a pop up gazebo – completely stripped the plastic gears sewing velcro tabs onto about 3 layers of moderate thickness nylon.

I just bought an old singer machine for not very much money for the same sort of thing – leather, canvas, patching jeans etc. It’s from about 1960 and seems very robust. It can stitch through several mm of leather with no problems. There’s no plastic on the entire machine – it’s lasted 50 years, and will probably last another 50 at least. There’s loads on ebay – have a look for the 201. You have to pay a little more if you want to be able to do bar tacks or zigzags (handy for webbing), maybe £100 for a 306K.

Get yourself one of the older machines off ebay. I purchased a Janome New Home which I think dates from around the 60s. It’s got a cast iron body and will sew threw multiple layers of fabric and webbing. Great machine and cost £50 off ebay.

Rich

I use one of these 😀 Familly hand down from the 1940-50s with an electric motor fitted

[url=https://flic.kr/p/NadyEi]Singer 99 Y8625450[/url] by Andy Wrigley, on Flickr

Seems to work well enough. Important to learn the basics of how to handle fabric, sew round corners and back tack.

#overlocker

Like bikes, it’s easier if you go into a shop. We ended up with a Janome XL601 (about £300), like bikes there’s the £60 “sewing machine shaped objects” that are sold in Lidl/Aldi/Hobbycraft, then they start to get expensive really quickly.

£300 seemed to be the point at which more features stopped adding anything really useful. And the Janome came with another box filled with different feet (to stretch on the bike shop analogy, the equivalent of getting a load of different tyres with your £300 hardtail) and a quilting table.

The Janome deals with thick cordura and webbing easily enough so I’d imagine any decent machine would.

Although if all you want to do is sew bike bags, the old singer machines are what a lot of people use for tough stuff like bags, dennim and sail repairs.

This thread (no pun) has led to an interesting Ebay interaction.

I like the sound of making my own stuff and thought a sewing machine could be a useful thing to learn how to use over winter so looked on Ebay and saw a machine pretty new and made for tough jobs.

It was local, buy it now and the seller was mainly selling clothing, so I sent a message (after signing up for an ebay account) saying would they give me a 10 min run through on how it works if I paid the asking price £60.

The response is:

“You stupid or something you dumb piece of shit ****.off you scam”

edit, I sent back:

Interesting response, I can understand caution this being my first purchase but given its clear I would be collecting in person I’m not sure how you could think it would a scam. Ah well your loss, have a nice, if slightly angry and paranoid life.

He replied:

**** off mate i will be reporting you! Low life uneducated scum.

Have I broken some Ebay rule?

Nope perfectly reasonable request by you and a ****** of a response by him. Sounds like he either didnt know if it worked or how to use it. Personally I’d report that comment back to ebay 😕

Which item was it? Sounds like he could do with a few more enquiries…

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/toyota-jeans-sewing-machine-/122164459930?hash=item1c7191b99a:g:BBkAAOSwTA9X8tih

Although I think any more hassle may push him over the edge!!

Full transcript below reads (bottom to top), think I’ll go and buy a bag off wiggle.

…………………………………………………………….
End

Don’t you think it would have been better just to say you didn’t want to show me how to use it?

– Uneducated scum why did you ask for a 10 minute tourial you daft cow piss off out of here

You can’t string together a coherent sentence, put a full stop between **** and off and don’t capitalise your I’s when used mid sentence but call me uneducated? You also still haven’t said how I would be scamming you by turning up at your door giving you £60 in notes and taking the thing your selling. Can you explain?

– Listen you uneducated scum move off here before i do report you for attempting to scam me i aint stupid move off now

Reporting me for what?

-**** off mate i will be reporting you! Low life uneducated scum.

Interesting response, I can understand caution this being my first purchase but given its clear I would be collecting in person I’m not sure how you could think it would a scam.
Ah well your loss, have a nice, if slightly angry and paranoid life.

-You stupid or something you dumb piece of shit ****.off you scam

Hi,

If I buy the machine at the asking price would you give me a 10 minute tutorial? 🙂

Thanks

I have my mum’s old Singer for making power kites, you’ll need a good strong needle to punch through thick material and webbing but it should work fine. Learn to use it on old clothes and then scraps of the material you’ll be working with. Very satisfying when you get the hang of it.

This’ll come up I guess, but what thread is everyone using with their machines?

I’ve got an old Singer like the one pictured above, but I’ve never really found a decent thread it likes … so sew by hand; which is a pain on big jobs I could just bash through the machine in a 100ths the time.

When I sew by hand I normally use 18/3 unwaxed linen thread (from years of repairing saddlery / rugs), it’s ok for webbing / lunges / dog leads, but it’s too big for VX21 / cordura, and way too big for my machine.

Mine is the same as Andy’s. Used for all sorts. Happily stitches many layers of denim. Made bike luggage from lorry curtain sides plus double layers of thick webbing etc. Too primitive to do much other than straight line but being manual you can force the needle through gently one stitch at a time. Often found at car boot sales or people chuck them. My mum collects the damn things. 🙄

ok, guys you are all a little off the mark here, for heavy materials to make life easy you need an industrial sewing machine. the good news is that you can pick them up dirt cheap, we paid 50quid for ours (singer) and it is a beast.

i can not use a sewing machine admittedly but my wife does textile art and stuff so knows her way around one. she has a very good singer for normal stuff but when we bought our camper it was clear that although her machine could possibly do the upholstery it was not really up to the job. the industrial machine, she reckons, makes it easy.

Thanks guys, I’m definitely be buying secondhand on TradMe (NZ eBay) so looks like I should be looking at older and that most older ones go through leather/webbing?

It can’t be that hard; can it?

This is a bit drawn out, but I think he knows his stuff:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4OXMvUUQh8[/video]

Thanks Tillydog I will watch that with interest!

Once you get past the ‘how to use ebay’ bit, it’s not too bad! 🙂

as a footnote, which shows what i know really, i mentioned this thread to the wife and she said for just a couple of bits a decent normal machine would probably do if you got the right needle and ran it slow. but she said an industrial would be easier.

ours is a bit like this one, and as i say i think i paid 50quid.

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=313496.0;all

You want a machine that is described as heavy duty. Then buy yourself a walking foot attachment. What this does is ensures that both plies are fed through at the same rate which helps to eliminate any pucker that will occur without one.