Originally Posted by miriam

I wore out a perfectly good Pfaff industrial - yeah it WILL sew through the layers but I bent the needle shaft. If you can buy a $25 Japanese machine or two just keep parts around... I guess it depends on how much weight you are putting through at the same time you put the layers/bulk through the machine. I also learned to use ramps and let gravity help feed the machine. After the Pfaff died, I got an old Singer walking foot - that is what you want to sew on... At one point I had to do a 40X100 ft awning in my little space. I did it by using a ramp and a rolling cart and dropping it in folds on the floor in front of the machine. Everything was rolled up to get it into the space.

My toughest job was reproducing 2 WWII officer's tents with two awnings over the tents and one awning between the tents. I was allowed to research at the museum at Ft Knox, mircrofilm the pattern/blueprint. I did it according to plan. When it was set up two old vets paid me a very high compliment. They said they didn't think any of those were still around!!! I wish the guy that had me do them would have sent a picture of it for me to see the set up. It was set up at Ft Knox for an event. At that time I was using an old WWII Singer walking foot machine. The olive drab fabric was like sewing on a crayon. I had to keep cleaning the thing. I could have made lot of money doing those tents... It about killed me to do that project though. The chemicals were horrid on my system. Would you also believe there were absolutely NO SCRAPS when I was done.

If you don't have a ton to do just look around for an old 15 clone... Those are pretty tough and they are cheap.