HMAS Watson..... Sewing 102.....

G'day all.    

At last time to fill you in on the rest of the HMAS Watson sewing lessons.  Ha ha.

If you remember, when I visited HMAS Watson last week to deliver a quilt I was asked to give some assistance to the crew who were tasked with creating a canopy for a food cart.  Their chief had given them a sewing machine to use and then had to shoot off.

Who do you ask when you have a sewing task to complete and the Quilt Lady is there.... 

Problem was, the task was not going to be as easy as they had hoped as the scissors they had were sooooo bad they could barely cut the sewing thread, let alone the material that was being used. 

As luck would have it, we were having a sewing day at my home the next day so Taila and Lauren brought their material and their measurements and joined us.

There was not much time to Gail set to working out what needed to be done and the cutting and sewing started..

There was not really much that the girls could do to help Gail so they jumped in to helping with other tasks and there are a bunch of troops that should be happy that they did because with their help we achieved much more that day than we would have otherwise.

Their main job for the day was layering quilts ready for quilting.  This is a three man job the way that we do it .. makes it quicker and more efficient.   This is the process of gluing the front of the quilt, the batting (the padding inside the quilt) and the backing together so that they hold together whilst we sew them together.  We use a special spray glue to do it.

Next the girls helped by cutting up a roll of batting... 30m rolls get cut up and stacked up in my office so we can just grab lengths when we need them.

Gail slaved away all morning and early afternoon and finished the canopy just in time for the very grateful girls to take it back to work.  All that needed doing was the hemming and that was accomplished expertly.

We couldn't send them off without giving them a laundry bag each.

And here is the finished canopy...

Expertly hemmed and all

Job well done girls!!  BZ

And yes, that is an Aussie Hero Patch sewn on to the canopy.    We snuck it on right at the last minute... but the Chief Petty Officer, when told we had done it said they were honoured to have our patch on it.  

Till next time ..... keep spreading the word and sharing the knowledge....

Jan-Maree  xx