Dear Constant Reader,
Happy Friday! I am so excited and grateful to announce that the campaign for my little book has hit its THIRD stretch goal. We’ll now have 4 pages in color!
If you want your name in the acknowledgements, this is the last day to pledge at that level.
And now for your tip…
New project, new needle.
When you start a new sewing project, put a fresh needle in your machine and change it often over the course of the project. Needles get dull and bent, especially when subjected to some of the fabrics we use for burlesque costumes. A dull needle can damage your fabric by punching holes instead of gliding between fibers, snarl your threads, and wreck your tension. New needles are so much cheaper than wasted time and bitter tears.
How often should you change your needle? I’ve seen recommendations for as little as 4 hours of sewing to as many as 20 hours. Personally, I listen. If I start to hear a popping noise when the needle goes through the fabric, it’s dull and must go.
I’m told by Scratch that this rule of thumb applies to carpentry as well. Not only do dull tools give poor results, they are actually dangerous to work with. A fresh table saw blade is much cheaper than a trip to the emergency room.
Happy sewing!
When curling your lashes, move the curler from base to tip, gently squeezing as you go.
Even costume pieces could use a doublecheck. I learned this to my regret a couple of years ago. In “Factory Girls”, we wear these adorable tear-away overalls (seen at right at the Ohio Burlesque Festival 2014). There’s a long row of snaps up each leg, so we always appreciate help resnapping after rehearsals and shows. However, and this is very important, to get the timing of the tear-off right, we only fasten every other snap. Also, since these were commercial overalls that we modified, they had a big rivet-like button at each hip, which we leave unfastened, using a whopper popper (a really big snap, for those who don’t know the lingo) instead.
