so who said men can't sew?

Well when you think about it a lot of men do sew, but mostly for business not pleasure. Ant here is sewing for a utalitarian purpose to achieve a driving pleasure goal. I've mentioned the recent Mini Moke purchase (still yet to take a photo, sorry), and one of the first jobs that needed attention was zip replacements in the drivers side of the canopy. I replaced the first but didn't have another heavy duty zip to hand for replacing the other until a few days ago. I've been busy with other sewing, which is the norm anyway, and kept forgetting to do this second zip. Anthony is quite confident on The Thug and well, I'd like to say happily sewed away but I can't, seeing how the vinyl canopy fabric is slippery and caused the poor boy to let loose a few expletives. He got the job done though and it works fine.

Yesterday I made another tunic top in a 100% cotton knit, mainly because I wanted an excuse to try out the Mother-in-law's overlocker (serger) and chose a pattern that I'm familiar with (I think I'm going to suffer from tunic overload before too long).

After sitting down with the instruction manual to learn all about threading the darn thing I then set to work on some scrap knit fabric. Ma didn't tell me if it's got ball point needles in it or not and as they're quite different from standard sewing machine needles I just had to keep going with them. I fear they may not be ball point as one of the stitching lines doesn't always pick up the thread, similar to when you try to use a standard needle on knit fabric with a standard machine. I also didn't feel confident enough to do it all on this machine and I needed to put a zip in anyway. The Bernina is currently in quilting mode - has the walking foot attached, quilting needle and invisible thread, so out came the 99k (Fanny Featherweight is still at the shop). Put a ball point needle in and stitched the neatest zip I've done in a long time. I continued to assemble the top on the 99k and only used the overlocker for finishing the raw edges. I know this is a long winded story but I had to share the satisfaction I got from this trusty old machine.

Fanny came home this arvo so once I'm finished here I'll get her out for a play.