More Quilting With Kiddos: Anders and the '51 Featherweight Sew Up Some Fence Rail Blocks

Success!  7" x 5" Pieced Units with 1 1/2" Center Strip

I shared back in August that I had started quilting lessons with my boys.  Anders went first, and then when it was Lars's turn, he had gotten engrossed with a counted cross stitch project and he has opted to complete that before beginning his first quilt.  No UFOs for Lars-of-Ours!

I was using Harriet Hargrave's Quilter's Academy series initially, starting with the beginning lessons in the Freshman Year book.  Anders, my 5th grader, enjoyed learning all the facts and nitty gritty details about thread ply, fabric grain, and rudimentary textile science in this book, but when I tried to do the first exercises with him I quickly determined that I did not feel comfortable with him rotary cutting or handling a steam iron.  After all, I still burn myself with that wicked iron on a weekly basis, and watching him try to control a slippery acrylic ruler while slicing with a razor-sharp rotary cutter made Mommy nauseous.  So I'm doing the cutting and pressing and he's focusing on learning to sew straight, even seams and keep his raw edges lined up properly so that his units finish the correct size.  For a child who is just learning to operate a sewing machine, that's plenty!  If he was trying to learn the sewing, pressing, and cutting all at once, it would be much more difficult for him to determine where he had gone wrong when his finished units didn't measure up.  With Mom cutting and pressing, he can concentrate on one variable at a time, just like they teach him in science class.  Don't you love how everything is connected to everything else?

So, as per the exercise in Hargrave's Freshman Year book, Anders was working with 2" wide strips of fabric cut into 7" lengths.  After seaming three strips together, he should have a finished unit measuring 7" x 5", and his center strip should be precisely 1 1/2" wide. 



Vintage Singer Adjustable Seam Guide on my 1951 Featherweight

Judy, my 1951 Singer Featherweight, is factory equipped with her original early style stitch plate sans markings.  I attached this vintage Singer seam guide accessory to the holes in the machine bed and used 1/4" graph paper to ensure I had the guide exactly 1/4" from the needle before screwing it down securely.  This type of seam guide is so much better than the 1/4" presser feet with attached guides, in my opinion, because I can move it a hair to the left or to the right if need be in order to sew seam allowances that result in perfectly sized finished units -- with certain combinations of needles, fabrics and thread, I need a scant 1/4" rather than a true 1/4".  In this case, because we're using lightweight cotton fabrics, a 70 Microtex needle and Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread, a true quarter inch was right on the money. 

Similar Seam Guide for Modern Berninas

Incidentally, I recently discovered that Bernina makes a patchwork seam guide for my 750 QE and other modern machines that looks identical to this one.  It's been added to my wish list!

All of Anders' fabric had been cut ahead of time, and as he seamed pieces together, I pressed and starched them.  When we measured the first unit he was very discouraged to find that the fabric edges had slipped apart while he was sewing, resulting in a fence rail unit with a center strip measuring 1 1/2" at one end and more like 1 5/8" at the other end.  I frog-stitched it for him and had him do it over.  The second try was practically perfect on that unit, and all of his remaining units finished the correct size on the very first try.  We worked for about an hour and a half before he started to lose interest and wanted to call it quits for today.



Anders' Finished Units, 5" Wide x 7" Long

You know, I was initially thinking that it was wasteful to sew 7" long strips together, only to cut them down to 5" square later, but now I'm glad I did it that way.  Anders is concentrating on keeping those fabric edges aligned at the right edge, but not all of his units have the strips perfectly even at the top and bottom.  Later this week, I'll trim these units down to be exactly 5" square with perfectly straight sides, and that will minimize his frustration when the time comes to sew the units together.  Kids need victories in the sewing room!



Anders' Sewing Setup

One more tip for sewing with children: You probably need to tweak your usual sewing setup in order to accommodate the ergonomic requirements of their much smaller bodies.  The first time I sat Anders down at the machine, this didn't occur to me.  Afterwards, looking at the pictures I'd taken, a realized that the bed of the sewing machine was up near his collar bone and the poor child was reaching up at a very uncomfortable angle to sew.  Now I'm raising the adjustable sewing chair to its highest setting so that his elbows are just an inch or two above the table.  This causes his feet to dangle in midair, so I instructed him to rest his left foot on the base of his chair, and I put the foot controller on top of an upside-down plastic thread bin so he could reach it comfortably with his right foot.  Also, since the 15 watt incandescent light bulb that belongs on the Featherweight reminds me of driving down a dark country lane in the fog with one headlight out, I have swapped that out for an LED bulb AND I'm supplementing with an Ott floor lamp to the left of the machine, to make it as easy as possible for Anders to see that his fabric edges are rubbing the edge of the seam guide, but not buckling or bending up against it.  Seeing what you're doing is half the battle!

Since school is in full-swing, we're on a bi-weekly schedule with our sewing sessions.  Usually one son is at my mom's house working on oil painting while the other one is in my studio with me, but Grammy isn't available for painting next weekend so I'm considering attempting to work with both boys at once -- Anders continuing to work on his fence rail blocks, and Lars with his counted cross stitch project.  Theoretically this should work just fine, as long as I have them each set up at opposite sides of the room...  I'll probably make my final decision about this on the way home from church next Sunday, based on the Brawling-to-Brotherly-Love Ratio going on in the back seat.  ;-)

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to starting the next block in my Jingle BOM quilt!  What are all of you sewing this week?

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

How High is My Cutting Table? And How Big is TOO Big?

Now that I've bored you all with my dry-as-dust discussion of ergonomic sewing table heights (click here if you missed that one and can't bear to go on without it), we're moving on to the second-most-important work station in a sewing studio: The Cutting Table.  Dum, dum dum dum.....

New Cutting Table In-Progress

This is my fourth custom-built cutting table, believe it or not.  It consists of a kitchen drawer base cabinet that I bought and painted red for the sewing room in our last house, along with two ClosetMaid modified wire drawer units on either side.  I saw these wire mesh drawer bins in Carolyn Woods' book, Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter, which I reviewed here yesterday.  These are the bins that Alex Anderson uses to organize her own fabric stash, and I bought two of the 40" tall, 17" wide 5 Drawer Kit units online and then had Bernie cut them down for me. 

The surface of my cutting table, for now, is an old 67" x 35 1/2" Pottery Barn kitchen table top that was previously repurposed as a kiddie arts and crafts table in our play room. Honestly, I'm torn about the cutting table size, which is why I want to try this setup out for awhile and see if I can live with it.  My former cutting table (below) was a whopping 54" x 72".  That table was sized large enough to accommodate 54" wide bolts of drapery fabric and was a nice size for quilt basting, but it ate up a lot of space in the room since it was positioned as an island, accessible from all four sides.


Previous Cutting Table, 54" x 72", 35 1/2" height

The old cutting table was impossibly heavy and was balanced on four little wooden book cases with dead space at the corners and beneath the center of the table where all sorts of stuff would get piled and forgotten.   I rarely ever sew any drapery stuff anymore, but I liked knowing that I could if I wanted to.  I also liked having a table roomy enough that I could be rotary cutting on one end and sorting/staging my project on the other side of the table. 

However, one of my major goals from this rework/remodel is to free up enough space for a small seating area.  It's nice having a Room of One's Own, but who wants to quilt in solitary confinement, after all?  So we're testing out a much smaller (and much more NORMAL) sized cutting table, and I've positioned it up against the wall beneath the window to free up even more space.  If I decide I can live with this size, then Bernie will morph this into something sturdier with additional storage space, perhaps on casters with a drop-down leaf in the back so I can pull it out and get additional workspace every once in a blue moon when I need that larger size.

OSHA Cutting Table Dude

The height of my new work-in-progress cutting table is currently 37 5/8".  Of course my attempt to find a consensus about the "ergonomically correct" cutting table was a big flop -- recommendations ranged anywhere from 34" to 40" for me.  Everyone says to stand and bend your arms at about a 90 degree angle, and have someone measure from your elbow to the floor.  One book said that my cutting table should come up to the bottom of my elbow, but most sources, including the U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA guidelines, said that the table should be at elbow height or just a few inches below that, and a couple sources suggested slightly different ideal heights for cutting tables depending on whether you'll be cutting with shears or with a rotary cutter (elbow height if you cut primarily with scissors or shears, and a few inches below that if you primarily use rotary cutting tools).

I knew the table had to go a little higher than the 35 1/2" I had before, because I had that lovely red base kitchen drawer cabinet that I wanted to use and it didn't fit beneath my old table.  So I decided to go up about 2" to a 38" table height -- remember that I'm 5'8" tall, my elbow height is 40" from the floor, and your mileage may vary!  The idea is that I will be able to cut longer and more comfortably (sans back pain) if I don't have to bend down and stoop constantly at the cutting table. 

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

Book Review: Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter

Professional organizer Carolyn Woods immersed herself in the quilting world to write Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter: An Illustrated Guide to the Space of Your Dreams, visiting the sewing spaces of quilters near her home in Arizona as well as consulting with quilting celebrities like Alex Anderson, Libby Lehman, Diana McClun, and Nancy Arseneault.  I found quite a few storage ideas in this book that I really like, including the ClosetMade wire mesh drawer bins (shown on the cover) that Alex Anderson uses to organize her fabric stash.  I also loved the idea of repurposed library card catalogs used for thread storage, and a number of really good solutions for storing embroidery hoops, acrylic rulers and the bazillion tools and notions we all have piled up in our work spaces.  However, I can only give this book 2 out of 5 stars because the ergonomics section of this book is so misinformed.  

I have consulted two other sewing studio design books, several sewing web sites, and the U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA recommendations for ergonomically correct sewing and cutting stations. Woods' recommendations are so far out of whack with everyone else that, if her advice was followed by hard-core quilting enthusiasts, it would CAUSE back, neck, shoulder and wrist pain! 

OSHA Guidelines for Ergonomic Sewing Posture

Woods has degrees in political economy and business administration and runs a professional organizing business -- she does not have any credentials as an expert in ergonomics, which is fine, except that she does not appear to have consulted with any ergonomics or medical experts, either.  Woods' suggests a sewing surface height between 5 1/2-7" HIGHER than your elbow when you are seated with your arms bent at right angles -- this is in direct contradiction with current OSHA guidelines; OSHA and every other reputable source I consulted says that having to reach up like this to sew is stressful to your wrists, shoulders, and can cause muskeloskeletal disorders.   

If the author didn't want to research ergonomics for sewing, she should have left that part out of the book and focused on storage and organization, her strongest suits.  Misinformation is so much worse than no information at all.

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

What Height My Sewing Table? Ergonomics, Schmergonics!

Photo courtesy OSHA

All the experts agree that it's important to take ergonomics into consideration when setting up a sewing room.  If you spend long hours working at sewing, cutting, and pressing stations that are too high or too low for you, you're putting yourself at risk of injury to your back, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, etc.  Since my custom-built sewing cabinet and cutting table have been dismantled and I am already redesigning them as part of my studio remodel, I have been researching the ergonomics of sewing in attempt to figure out the optimal height for my work stations so we can customize my sewing furniture to fit my body, kind of like altering a commercial pattern for the perfect fit before sewing a dress.  Or so I've heard from folks who actually sew dresses...

The trouble I'm having is that there seems to be more consensus in Congress about tax reform than there is from the experts on sewing ergonomics.  I've consulted five different sources (The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines, Sewing.org, Carolyn Woods' Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter: An Illustrated Guide to the Space of Your Dreams, Leslie L. Hallock's Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space: Sewing Room Makeovers for Any Space and Any Budget, Lynette Ranney Black's Dream Sewing Spaces: Design and Organization for Spaces Large and Small, 2nd Ed.), and I'm getting wildly different advice from all of them about the correct height of sewing, pressing, and cutting surfaces.  Today, we're going to discuss the height of the sewing surface.


Proper Sewing Surface Height, per OSHA

I want to clarify that, in ergonomic discussions, the sewing surface is the STITCH PLATE OF YOUR SEWING MACHINE.  If your machine is recessed into a cabinet like mine will be, then the surface of the cabinet is the sewing surface.  However, if your machine is sitting on top of a table, then your actual sewing surface is going to be several inches higher than table top. 

All of the experts I consulted recommend that your sewing cabinet or table allows you to sit with your body centered on the needle of your sewing machine so you aren't constantly twisting your spine and leaning sideways in order to sew -- this sounds obvious to someone who sews, but the carpenter/handyman/husband building your sewing cabinet might think your body should be aligned with the center of the sewing machine if you don't tell them otherwise.  To determine the height of your sewing table or cabinet, start with a good, adjustable, supportive chair that enables you to sit with your knees and hips bent at approximately 90 degree angles, with your feet flat on the floor.  Once your chair is adjusted properly, sit down and bend your arms at right angles, palms down with your forearms parallel to the floor, and have someone measure from your elbow to the floor (some sources just said to measure from your elbow to the floor, others specified measuring from the bottom of your elbow or from the midpoint of the joint -- and this wass the beginning of the confusion).  Got that measurement?  Okay.  Depending on whose advice you're taking, that elbow-to-floor measurement is either your correct sewing surface height, OR you should add anywhere from 5 1/2 to 7" to get your ideal sewing surface height.  This means that my own ideal sewing cabinet should be anywhere from 29" to 34" tall.  Well, it was 30 1/2" tall before we took it apart, and the commercial sewing cabinet manufacturers offer their cabinets in standard heights ranging from 29" to 30 1/4".  I did notice that I was hunching my back and shoulders when I was free-motion quilting with my old setup, but that could have had more to do with inadequate task lighting than with the sewing surface height.  It's hard to know whether raising my sewing surface would be helpful or whether it would create a whole new world of pain and suffering! 



Koala's Quilt Pro Plus IV, 29 1/4" Sewing Surface Height

With the exception of the folks at OSHA, none of my experts has a professional background in ergonomics.  Woods is a professional organizer, Black's background is in kitchen and bath design, and Hallock (whose recommendations are closest to OSHA's) is a quilter herself with a background that includes mechanical engineering, professional organizing, and factory environments.  I know that the OSHA guidelines are geared towards assembly-line sewing in a factory environment versus free-motion quilting on a domestic sewing machine, and that someone sewing the same side seam in the same shirt over and over again might not need to get their eyes as close to their work as someone who is doodling thread pictures on a quilt for fun, but I still feel like the OSHA recommendations are more likely based on science than on hearsay.  I'm taller than average at 5'8" and I have a long torso, so I'm going to ask Bernie to build the new sewing cabinet 32" high, just an inch and a half above the "standard" cabinet height I had before.  That way my custom sewing cabinet will "fit" me the same way a commercial sewing cabinet from Koala, Horn, etc. would fit a person who was 5'5" or 5'6" tall.  One decision has been made -- wahoo!

Tomorrow we'll look at the correct height of the other two main work stations in a sewing room: the cutting table and the pressing station.  Onwards and upwards!

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.