Our 90 year old neighbour just happened to have an old industrial sewing machine in his shed. Pat managed to get the machine going again with help from Debi, who has done some sewing too. (Although the last thing she sewed was a bit different to a yurt cover - latex clubbing gear in fact. Maybe we'll start making canvas clubbing gear...or maybe not.)
It really is battleship grade machinery. The thread goes up here and down there through this bit and that bit - those are two tensioning wheels.
And this is the intricate casing that holds the lower bobbin.
Here's the bobbin winding mechanism in action.
The old machine works really well and ploughs its way through the layers and layers of canvas folded up for the seams. The biggest problem is just handling the volume and weight of all the cloth that goes into the top cover.
I'm getting excited now - trying out the first part of the cover for fit. So far so good and...
...YES YES YES !! A triumphant moment - the top cover goes on for the first time AND IT FITS!!
And here we have the outer cover on top of that with its clear plastic window, you can see the shadow of its scalloped/hexagonal shape.
So I've just got the walls to do now but they'll have to wait for a bit because I'm up in Scotland again for a few weeks.
MORE SOON!
