Session 7: Bonus Project: Quilted Machine Cover

Some sewing machines today come with a cover, but others don't and today's machines being larger are often harder to cover with the traditional patterns that we have for a cover. And that's because of their size, and also a lot of them have an angle display. So I want you to have a cover because it will protect your machine from dust, it will be a lot more fun because it's gonna be personalized with your fabrics. But more importantly it's gonna be an easy project to get you started on bonding with your machine. It's super simple. It's super fast. It's super cute. For a yard each you're gonna need approximately three quarters of a yard of quilted fabric. You're gonna need a quarter yard for the binding. You're gonna need approximately a yard and a half of grosgrain ribbon, whatever width you prefer, I think I went with a one inch width. And the project that I'm showing you is designed to fit a large machine such as Alfa. In fact, I'm gonna be using it for measuring today to show you what you need to do to fit your machine. There are a lot of fun fabrics out there. I pick these up. They're awfully cute. They're sewing theme fabrics. If you'd like to make your own quilted fabric, take two of these, put some batting in the middle and then just go ahead and use your quilting guide that comes with the machine to do diagonal lines or quilt as desired. If you don't want to do your own quilting, there are some fabulous quilted fabrics on the market. They're pre quilted, come in many different designs, colors and shapes. This was one that I thought was cute. They are reversible, which is also a lot of fun. And today I've decided that I'm going to use this black and white print with the daisies and the paisleys. And on the reverse, this one has the black and white gang. A lot of fun. If you haven't done binding before, if you aren't a quilter, I wanna give you a real quick demo because the main theme of this project is binding. It is a double fold binding, it's folded twice and then wrapped around. And it is also known as a French binding. You can use bias tape for this project, if you don't wanna make your own binding, I prefer to make my own one. One, it coordinates with what I'm doing, and two, I find I have better success with binding that I've created myself. I just never can quite get the accuracy with the pre-packaged bindings that I'd like to, and I've been trying for years. One thing that I need to tell my sewing friends out there as opposed to my quilter, is that normally, sewers are used to binding being cut and sewn as a bias tape. So it's very, very stretchy. For quilting and any time that you aren't binding something that has a curve to it, you can use what we call a straight grain binding. And to make straight grain binding, remember that your lengthwise grain is parallel with the salvage, the grain that's perpendicular to it is your crosswise grain. And of course the 45 degree is the bias. We're going to be cutting strips on the crosswise grain. And so you just, if you don't have a cutting mat and a quilting ruler and a rotary cutter, you may wanna try them. I'll demonstrate it real quickly here. If not, you can just mark your lines and cut it with scissors, as sewers have done for many, many years. So I cut off the excess piece there to give me a nice straight edge. And then I'm going to be cutting two and a quarter inch strips for this project. I wanna make sure that the edge of the ruler is lined up on a straight line and then check my marks for two and a half inches or two and a quarter inches all the way across, hold it carefully and go ahead and cut. And that's all there is to it. Once you have your strips cut, I want you to put them together like this. They're going to be offset by about a quarter of an inch. And the reason I'm offsetting it, is when you do your stitch here, you're going to be able to have straighter binding. It won't be off. Sometimes when we put it just like this, and so the layers can slip slightly, and one edge of the binding will be higher than the other. When it comes time to sew, you are going to be sewing with a diagonal stitch from corner to corner, all right? After you stitch it, you need to take your ruler and put it along the stitching line. And you need a quarter of an inch seam allowance. Quilters work with quarter inches, as opposed to the five eighths inch that sewers are used to. And then I want you to go ahead and just trim off the ears. That's the little triangles that are sticking out past the edge there. Trim those off. And now you have your strip of binding and you can see how nice, and even that is along the entire strip. The next step, is going to be, to press that seem open, quilters oftentimes go to one side, when it comes to binding, we want it pressed open and then you are going to press it in half along the lengthwise direction of the strip. When you're finished, it will look like this. And this is what we will be sewing onto our project. When I come back, I'm gonna show you how to measure the machine and we're gonna get started. The ext step is to measure your machine. You're going to need a flexible tape measure. And I want you to measure across the front of your machine to the widest point. It's going to be an estimate because typically the widest point is your flywheel but it may be another point. So just kind of give it a good guesstimate and then you need to account for coming around the sides. So what I do is, try as much as possible to come halfway on either side and then add in a little extra for the flywheel. This does not have to be a perfect measurement. In the ballpark will work, but you want to be fairly close. The second measurement you wanna take is from the widest width, which in this case is the front of the arm and on some machines, it's actually your display because it's angled out. But on this machine, it's the front of the bed. You're going to go over and back around to the table top. So tabletop to tabletop, over the top of the machine. That is the measurement that you will be cutting your piece of fabric. You did not need to allow extra for seam allowance because we're going to be binding it. So go catch your fabric. And I'll be back with you in a couple of minutes to show you how to sew this. Now we're ready to apply the binding. I'm going to be using one of my favorite feet for this task. Quilters are probably more familiar with it than my sewers are. It's called the quarter inch piecing foot. It's called the quarter inch foot because the outside edge of both sides of the foot are exactly a quarter of an inch away from the needle plate or the need a hole rather. So my needle is right here, it's quarter of an inch. To the inside of the right edge of the foot is an eighth of an inch. So you can use it for eighth of an inch seams or quarter-inch seams. There are markings a quarter of an inch in front of the hole for the needle and a quarter of an inch behind it. And you will be using these for the purpose of binding. These markings are all very critical. Each manufacturer's quarter-inch foot is a little bit different, but they have the same basic concept. It is to give you a perfect quarter of an inch seam. And that's what we're going to be doing today. If you don't have the quarter inch foot, don't worry. You can go ahead and use your regular sewing foot. Just be aware of where a quarter of an inch is for you on that particular foot or adjust your needle left or right as necessary to get a quarter of an inch. Check it with your ruler and you're all set sew. If you have integrated dual feed, go ahead and engage it when you put your foot on, because it will help guide the binding through a little bit easier and keep everything smooth. I'm going to be sewing from the wrong side of the fabric. We normally put binding on from the right side, turn it to the back and hand stitch it. In this case, I'm going to do the reverse. I'm going to put it on the wrong side, wrap it to the front and machine stitch it because it's a lot faster and this is not an heirloom. So machine stitching will be just fine. The first thing I wanna do is take the edge of my binding and I'm going to turn it back roughly a half an inch. Doesn't have to be super precise and just give it a finger press. Or if you want, you can go over and press with your iron. Fold it back over, align the edges so that it's nice and neat. And you are set to go. I want you to start approximately a third to a half way down, one of the sides of your machine cover. I'm just using a simple straight stitch at 2.5, which would be 10 to 12 stitches per inch on your other machine. If you notice, I'm just guiding the fabric through. I'm not pulling it, I'm letting the machine do all the work for me. And with this foot, I'm able to go at a fairly fast speed because I'm not following the needle, I'm following the edge of the foot. As you get close to the corner, slow down, and you're going to stop when this first quarter inch mark is level with the edge of the fabric underneath. At this point, I want you to stop. Normally I pull this out just a little bit at this time, and I usually work with it about this position on the machine but for purpose of demonstration I'm gonna bring it all the way down to the table, so you can see exactly what I'm doing. I am not cutting my threads, I don't have to. I'm going to take the binding and we are going to bring it up and back. So you just take it like that and bring it back so that you are creating a 90 degree angle here. This is going to help make your miter. We want to make sure it's nice and tight on the leading edge here. That it's even, that it's an even fold here that the two edges are folded together. And that the edge of the binding is even, with this edge. So everywhere you want it even. Hold on to it, you're gonna put it back under the machine and you can sew off, from off of the machine, you don't have to find your quarter inch point. You can sew from the back edge, start sewing and come in this direction. So you're going to be sewing perpendicular to what you just sewed Just like that. And now we're going to continue all the way around. All right. As you get to the very last part where you're going to be meeting the binding, I want you to go ahead and just stop with your needle down in your machine. And you're going to look at the edge of your binding and just come in a little bit maybe an inch and snippet. Then I want you to come back to where we anchored it there. And I'm just gonna take out a few stitches. You can take it out of the machine if you want. Because it's a few stitches I figured we could just leave it in. And snips are a little easier to do this with. Once those are out what you're going to do is lay this piece of binding right inside, just like that. Make sure it's nice and flat. If you need to remove a couple more stitches, it's okay. Make sure it's in there, nice and flat. I sewed it down originally just to make sure that we knew exactly where the binding was going to be starting and stopping and that it was anchored. It just makes it a little bit easier for you. And then we're simply going to sew right over that and finish putting on the binding. There are other ways to end the binding and join the edges, but this is a quick and easy way. And since this is a very simple project, I figured that we would just take the easy way out. Next, I will show you at the ironing board, how to turn the binding over and make the miter on your sewing machine cover. We'll be right back. I've finished sewing the binding on and I've already gone ahead and pressed the binding to the front. You just wanna press away from the seam and roll it over to the front. And I've already got it part way done, but I'm wanna show you how to make the miter on the corner. You're going to, as you bring it to the front and I'm going to come and right off the edge of the binding just go straight as you're pressing this. You wanna make sure that the binding is covering your line of stitching. This is important. We wanna cover the line of stitching with the binding. And then after we get this edge pressed, you can take a stiletto or a pin if you like, and just lay it in there as a second finger and pull this part back. What you're trying to do is make a 45 degree angle here, right? Once you have that in place, I like to hold it with my stiletto because the iron gets a little hot. Give it that good burst of steam to set the corner and then press the rest of the adjoining edge. Once you have it pressed, you're going to come in and pin that corner and you can see what a nice miter we have here. It's a nice straight line. And on the backside, you have a nice straight line. That's a beautiful 45 degree corner. That's what we want. Then you're going to come along and I like to pin within an inch or two of the corner on either side, just to hold it down for you. And then I like to pin every, oh, say two to four inches apart on the binding to make sure it's going to hold while I stitch. The pins that I'm using are glass headed pins. They're very slender. They're a long pin. And , they have, as you can see, they have a glass head. The reason I like the glass head is when I give steam, I could press right over them and they won't melt, like other pins might like your ball headed pins. So look for glass, head pins. I think you'll really enjoy using them. I have that binding around. If I want, I can give it another shot of steam or if you're happy with it, you can go right to the sewing machine. And that's where we're going. Now, I want to show you, there are several different feet that you can use for putting on your binding. You can of course use a regular sewing foot or you can use one of these. The first one I wanna show you is the narrow edge foot. The narrow edge foot has a little leader on it. If you will, a little strip of metal and it stands out in front of the needle. So my needle spec here, here is the leading edge of the foot. When you're using this, you can adjust your needle left or right of center, so you can get very, very close to your edge. And rather than trying to watch the needle while you're sewing something like bias binding, all you have to watch is this leading edge, and it will guide you perfectly each and every time. And you can go very, very quickly sewing your binding on and have very professional results. It is one of my favorite tools. For my sewers, it's also a great tool for doing top stitching especially right next to the very, very edge of a collar or a cuff, front of your plackets. It's also good for doing the inside stay stitching on your facings. I think you'll find this is a very worthwhile tool to add to your toolbox. The other one that I like is the open toe applique foot. As you can see, the inside is open. It's wonderful for having good visibility. And I like using the sauna binding because I'm pretty good with eyeballing, and I find that I like the visibility and to make sure that I am indeed catching the edge. So either one will work fine for what we're going to do right now. So let me put on the foot in. We're going to get sewing, just give me one second here. For his particular machine, for this , I can use either of these feet with my dual feet, which is very, very nice. So I will indeed engage that. And in this case, I am going to move my needle over. And let me just check my positioning. You usually have to have your presser foot up when you're doing any movement of the needle. It tends to be a machine function. There we go. That's where I want it. As you come along, make sure you're removing the pins. You don't want to sew over them. And I'm gonna go ahead and sew this and I'll be right back. Well, our quilted machine cover is actually finished but I want to show you a couple of steps that I didn't show you earlier. They're just some easy ones. Let's put this on the machine so you can kinda get a feel for it. I've already tied the edges. It's very simple cover. It just goes on with ties. You're going to want to cut eight ties approximately 15 inches long. Again, I used to grosgrain ribbon on this and then sew them at the very bottom of each edge. I came up just above the finished edge of the binding. There was my reference point. Then I came up at approximately seven inches higher to cover the machine. I wanna make sure that it's below that flywheel. So for my machine, seven inches was just about right. When you put them on, you have two options, one you can put them into the edge where the binding is going to be right before you put the last edge of binding on or you can just take the simple way out like I did and fold back in edge of the ribbon. You're just gonna fold the back, maybe half of an inch and then capture that in your stitching and just do a nice little square all the way around so that it's gonna hold nice and tight for you. And you're done. You simply go ahead at the end when you're finished and you tie all four of these. And if you've made it like I did with a little extra give to it, you can literally just slip it on and off your machine. You won't have to come tie at each time. If you prefer it to be a little more snug and form fitting then take off that extra inch or two and have it match up perfectly and then tie it each time. The point of it is to keep the dust off the machine not so much off the top, but inside where the mechanism is. You don't want that getting all dusty. It will preserve your machine and let it function a lot longer for you. And besides it looks pretty in your sewing studio with a pretty cover on it. So I hope you enjoy the project. It's a great way to practice binding, and it's a great way to bond with your machine and good luck with your machine, and I hope you get many years of enjoyment from it.