The Upholstery Forum

Been practicing with some scrap material which laid flat prior to sewing it.

Is this an issue with how the material is being held while sewing or is the thread tension too high.

The panels line so it does not seem like anything is being pulled.

Tension is too tight, back your dial off a bit and re try.

Most likely your over all tension might be too tight. Try loosening the top and bottom thread tension and see if that helps. If the thread tension doesn't help, another possibility is your presser feet pressure could be a little to much. You want the pressure to be enough to where material doesn't slip under the feet causing variang stitch length while not smashing the fabric like crazy. Once set you should rarely need to adjust it again. The only time I ever adjust presser feet pressure is If Im sewing something really slippery like clear vinyl to marine canvas.

Let us know if that fixes it!!

The top thread is already backed off to the point the tension disk are barely touching. I balanced the tension out with the bobbin tension. I did tighten up the presser foot because I was getting intermittent stitch length changes, but maybe the presser foot is too tight.

The tell of thread tension is where the links join…. which should be right in the middle of your 2 pieces of fabric as your thread path could make for a looser or tighter stitch.

Usually irregular stitches indicates a bigger problem that needs solving.

@Revv Up The irregular stitch length, was happening when I would attempt to apply so tension to one layer is order to correct my alignment as 1 layer was advancing faster than the other layer. This no longer happens after increasing the presser feet tension.

I have adjusted the presser foot so that it has the minimum amount of pressure that can allow me to pull against the foot for adjustment to alignment marks without affecting the stitch length. I also removed the screw from the bobbin spring to give me the least amount of bobbin tension and then I went through the top thread path removing anything that was adding extra tension. Once I got the stitch balance I put the screw back into bobbin. I am now at the lowest amount of total tension. However, as the piece I am working on get long they become less flat still, but it is better than before.

Any other ideas on what may be causing it to still not lat flat?

It looks like you got them laying pretty flat now. That's plenty good enough for any project. You always will pull some tension on any cover you make when you install it. That will make all the everything lay flat. It looks like that material is pretty soft? Soft materials do this some times.

Try steaming those practice pieces pull the seam a little bit and see if that is any better. Steam will get every thing to relax and lay flat.

Also it looks like your stitch length is a little tight. Try lengthening the stitch length a bit. Having stitches too close together can contribute to this as well.

Thanks. The stitching length is 8SPI in most places, but is about 8.5 SPI in some areas.

The material is a little soft closer to the edge of the bolt, but stiffer away from the edge. There is also some delamination close to the edge making it more like fabric than vinyl.

I started working on curves today and they seem to come out better looking than the straight pieces.

Been practicing some curves and changing the top stitching width some.

This is my first attempt at following a line in the middle of the material, however, instead on putting a dot on the foot to follow, I found a foot with a split toe.

That's really good for your first attempt!

Been working on setting my twin needle, and decided to compare my single needle top stitching to the twin needle. What I found is on short pieces the result was similar as the pieces got longer the twin was better, but on really long pieces I have issue with both. I think the issue with the twin needle on really long pieces is that I may be letting the clutch run faster than I can control.

Twin needle machine that is pretty cool to have.

Yes it is nice to have but, this one can only go to 6SPI. Anything longer I still have to do on the single needle. However, 6SPI seem to be good enough for most things it seem like.