Monday, November 23, 2009

Sewing but not for me

Last week, I was given a target for the number of head coverings they wanted each week: five. In an ideal world I would have been working on these throughout the week... but I'm lazy and so have only done the bulk of the work today.

When I first started working on these, I found that it took me about an hour to make each one from cutting it out to sewing the final seam. Since I was making five at once, I figured I'd streamline my work by doing the same task on each item instead of making each item separately. I thought that this would save time because that's what normally happens... but it didn't. It took about five hours to make the five I made. It seems to not matter whether I make them individually or in a more efficient way; each one still takes me about an hour.

While working on these today, I discovered that there are two bottleneck processes. If I can do these steps in less time, making the head coverings will take much less time. One of these processes is turning the 2 x 36" ties and the other is doing the final assembly. I think I can easily save time turning the ties by attaching a string to the bottom and then turning it that way. That's what you can do when you're working with thin tubes or spaghetti straps but I didn't use that method with these ties because they're so wide. At this point, I'll do anything that'll save time.

As for the final assembly, I'm not exactly sure how to save time there. This is the step where the outer fabric and linings are attached to the front band. That's actually easy, but a bit time-consuming because things have to be matched and pinned. The harder part is when I attach the ties to the band and to the fabric; this small seam actually makes a right angle to the band/body seam. This way, the band lies flat on the forehead and the ties are set up to already cross at the back of the neck. As well, all of the raw edges are fully enclosed so there's no danger of raveling.

I'll have to experiment with different ways to sew this tricky part in order to (hopefully) save time. At least I did manage to get the head coverings finished (well, except for the final seam at the bottom to close the raw edges in - I'll sew that early tomorrow). I'll take them in when I go for Meditation tomorrow morning. I tried to make them dressier so I hope they like them.

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