sewing Pertex 4

[Phil J]

Pertex 4 fabric might now be regarded as old tech. But I have yards of it and I have never sewed it successfully. Adjusting thread tension / needle size etc all seem to have little effect on correcting skipping stitches and puckering. I’m looking for tips on how to sew this beast correctly.

[Monte Masterson]

You might try a walking foot or just a different regular foot. Also consider longer stitch length. Of course you’ll want to pull material with hands on both sides of foot when sewing to keep material taut, but you’re probably already doing that.

I have trouble with slippery stainless steel feet, however I have far less stitch problems with a hard plastic foot, yet others may not notice the same with their machines.

[Phil J]

Monte, thanks for the tip. I haven’t tried a plastic or a walking foot. I’ll give this a go.

[Phil J]

Hi Monte, I used  a plastic foot and it did the job, thanks

[Jerry Adams]

I was dropping stitches once and maybe it was Roger that suggested that when the needle was pulled out of the fabric, it pulled up the fabric and the foot so that the loop underneath wasn’t caught by the mechanism that pulls the thread around the bobbin underneath.

Now what did I do to remedy that?  Hmmm…

Maybe a bigger or smaller or different style of needle would work better.  I was dropping stitches.  I switched to a Schmetz Universal 90/14 and that worked better.

Once I inserted my needle backwards and that caused dropped stitches.

[Roger Caffin]

A lot of the problems with tension and especially dropped stitches can be solved by tensioning the fabric, with one hand behind the machine and the other hand in front.

You see, conventional domestic machines were never designed to handle UL synthetic fabrics; rather they were designed to handle material like sheets and wool and heavier. The legendary old black Singers were even able to sew grain sacks. (I have one.)

Cheers

[Author]

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