Tip Time–Vinyl Sewing

I recently learned the best tip about sewing with plastics.  If you have ever tried to sew with these materials you might have found that your presser foot wanted to stick to it and not slide along.  I know I had that trouble when I made all the luggage tags a little over a year ago.  Posted about them here on March 18, 2010.  I used a piece of fabric or paper to help the presser foot to move along and not stick to the vinyl but at times it was a little tricky to keep it under half of the foot and not stitch over it.

I read this tutorial on making bag straps of vinyl on Paradiso Designs by Cheryl Kuczek.  She suggested using a Teflon or roller foot if you have one but the best part was the tip that a regular foot could be modified very easily to slide along on the vinyl.

I decided to give it a try and wonder of wonders it worked great!  OK, here are my photos and what I did following her instructions to modify a regular sewing foot.  First you need to gather your supplies….a roll of Matte Finish cellophane tape, yup that is it.  The shiny kind of tape will not work – only the matte finish will work for this application.Cut off a piece of tape the length of your machine foot and stick it to the bottom of the foot. 

Using an X-Acto knife or scissors and trim off the excess tape between the toes of the foot and the needle hole, sides and front and back of the foot.  Cut off any tape that is not stuck down to the foot.

That’s it, now you can sew vinyl without the foot sticking.  If you are only sewing these materials occasionally it is a lot cheaper to use the matte finish tape over buying a specialty foot.  If you sew with these materials all the time it might be worth it to buy the Teflon coated feet or the rolling foot.

I tried each of the feet pictured above with the tape on the bottom and they all worked like a charm on the vinyl.  I am thinking any foot configuration would do the job with the tape so give your machine feet a try.  I sure wish I would have known this trick last year but better late than never and I will sure use the tape on my presser foot the next time I need to stitch vinyl.  I would like to try it on leather but I don't have any leather to try it on…let me know if you use this trick on leather as I would love to know if it works as well on it.

Here is one of the samples I stitched…if this were a video you would see the foot sliding along just fine, stitch after stitch.  YAY!

 This post is from the blog, Nebraska Views. If you are not currently reading this via e-mail or an RSS feed, then this post has been stolen or scraped from the Nebraska Views blog.  Stolen content can be reported HERE .”

Until later,

Lynn