When I came back, unpacked my purchases, I realized that I had just bought a duplicate. I already have an invisible zipper foot, but it had gotten lumped in with my Janome feet and I had forgotten. No worries, I'll return it the next time. But I realized I would do a much better job if there was a way to keep my feet organized so that I wouldn't lose them or spend lots of time looking for the right foot (which I really don't like).
So, to the fabric store I go. Picked up some medium thickness vinyl, a fat quarter and 3 zippers. Also a double-fold bias strip.
Recently a friend has been nice enough to invite me to her monthly crafty session and I brought all this over to her and just started assembling the organizer there.
Quality-wise it was a shoddy job, really. I didn't square the vinyl and just started sewing the zippers to it. But what's useful now is to capture my lessons learned so that the next time I make something like this, it'll be easier, faster and of a higher quality.
- Don't assume that the vinyl is squared!
- For sewing feet a 3.5 inch pocket height works great.
- Use a longer stitch length since sewing through vinyl punctures it.
- Double-sided tape helps to hold the zipper to the vinyl to make it easy to sew it down.
- Using double-fold bias tape is easy! I used the instructions on this site. The only thing I had a hard time figuring out was what she meant by overlapping the ends since the picture was a little difficult to make out.
- Marking the stitch lines to make the pockets is a good idea to sew neatly. I winged it and it was okay, but not as nice as it would be if I actually used removal tape as a guide on the vinyl.
But overall I'm happy with it. I am glad I have a easy, neat and quick way to find my sewing feet.
