LOAD BEARING, STRAIGHT STITCH, SMALL SPACES

Do one stitch rotating the wheel by hand, then for the next stitch loosen the dog and shift the fabric back and to the right?

Having made quite a few packs with a machine that did only straight stitches, what I generally did was numerous rows of stitching, close to each other but not on top of each other. That was in the tightest situations. With a little more room, say where I was sewing on 3/4" webbing and could have stitching covering a square 3/4" on a side, I would sew two or three concentric boxes of stitching. There isn't anything magical about a zigzag or bartack; it's just a lot of stitches in a small area. When you do the back-and forth thing with a straight stitch machine it's called a backtack.

> straight stitch machines are fine for pack making, but wondered what they do in these situations?

I use an ancient Singer for packs – no zigzag. I dislike bar tacks anyhow: they are a cheap Chinese substitute for a decent spread-out load-bearing area with a good X in a box.

Cheers

Thank you all for your help. Yes Paul that is the direction I was heading I think, based on what I am finding at home. Glad to know that others have had to overcome the same issues. For the daisy chain up the centre of pack, I also noticed it was important to sew right to the edge of my webbing, instead of just doing rows that spanned 3/4 of the width, say. Anything less than the full width gave the webbing leverage to pull threads when under load. Roger, I appreciate that the box is ideal but what do you do if you want to sew a daisy chain but don't want to use up too much room? Or as another example, in my WE pack I notice that where webbing enters a seam, they have bar tacked this point. With a SS machine do most people just run a few more rows in this case? Thanks!

One thing is, if you put needle holes in fabric closer than about 1 or 2 mm together, it's like perforating paper, it weakens the fabric

X-box stitching gets the job done. When attaching suspension components, try not to skimp on space; more contact equals more strength.

I use bartacks to attach daisy chains, and if I'm sewing them perpendicular to the length of the webbing I sew them a bit beyond the edge on both sides. Ideally through at least two layers of fabric. A flat-felled seam with the daisy on top of it is my new favorite technique.

Think about the weakest material in the system. Usually it is the fabric, not the webbing or thread. You may want to have a reinforcement on the back of the fabric to stitch to. Adding more stitches or using a heavier thread can boost the thread strength.

Line Tack – stitching back and forth without the zigzag cover stitches of a bar tack works okay. Box X tacks are for webbing to webbing, like parachute harness and cargo netting where there will be pulls in 4 directions. Bar tacks are for small spaces like you describe. If the pull is only in 2 directions, thread/tack strength is most efficient if the stitching runs parallel to the lines of pull.

okay that has helped to clear-up which stitch suits what application- Thank very much for all you feedback.
When doing a high density of stitches I will probably back it up with a second layer of fabric now.
When i compared perpendicular tacks to parallel ones, i think the reason my parallel ones didn't hold up as well as i expected was because i wasnt pulling the webbing 'in-line'. Instead i was trying to part the webbing and therefore managed to get the stitches to begin tearing/ unraveling.
DaveC- I am just trying to imagine what youre describing about flat felled seam with a daisy on top. Does that mean to attach one end of the daisy into the seam?

Cheers!

You could, and I have, tucked one end of the daisy into the seam, though it's not necessary. In this case I was using 3/8" inch webbing, and after felling the seam with the bottom end of the webbing tucked in, did vertical bartacks every three inches right on top of the felling seam. This put it through three layers of fabric, which given that said fabric was fairly light (150d cuben hybrid) made me feel better about stitch pullout strength.