My Sewing Adventure

I learned how to sew with a sewing machine!

My family has this sewing machine that probably is older than me. It is the black manual sewing machine you have to operate with your feet. Yes, it is that old. 😅 I didn't put much attention to it until now. It all started when one of my pants were ripped because it was so old, and when my hands got too clammy so it feels uncomfortable to hold the metal handle on my door. So I thought to make a cover for it! That went, not bad. After that was done, I thought of something else I want to make with the sewing machine. Because apparently, I quite like sewing! 

I've been wanting to replace the padding on my headphone for awhile now, so I thought, I could make that too! My father has this sheet of sponge lying around unused, so I asked him if I could use it. The sponge is 2 cm thick. Then after I got that, I started making the pattern. This pattern is larger than the original padding, because I want this padding to be over-ear, and not on-ear like the previous one.

The pattern consists of 5 parts. Basically the 4 parts are used to create a torus to wrap the sponge, but one of the sides doesn't have a hole. Then the other part (the bottom left on the image) is stitched to the outer side of the side where there is no hole. This added layer is used to attach the pad to the headphone. I can stitch most of the part with the sewing machine, but to close the torus after I put in the sponge, I had to manually stitch it using ladder stitch to close it off. I also used manual stitching to attach the added part on the outside.

The left padding is the original one that came with the headphone. And the right one is the one that I made. One thing that I learned from making this is that sewing elastic fabrics is hard. Naturally when you sew, you want both pieces stretched the same amount. If not, your measurement is going to be off.

So here's the final result! 😊 Another thing I learned from this project is that you have to have a clean seam allowance! And what I mean by clean is that they have the same distance along the actual edge on your pattern. You can see on the first image above that my pieces don't have a clean seam allowance. This makes it hard to align both pieces when you're sewing them.

And don't forget to secure the stitch by going back and forth on the start, end, and intersections! 😅