Yesterday PP (Princess Pfaff - my trusty sewing companion) and I headed up to my mum's to perform lypo on Jumbo. We chose a nice sunny day on purpose, since we thought it would be a lot easier to confine all of our activity to just one location - the deck - and reduce the amount of furniture moving, shuffling, etc. required to make a big enough space for Jumbo to lie down and be unrolled and rolled again several times.
We set up the sewing machine at one end of a big table and arranged some chairs to help support Jumbo, as it passed through the machine.
One side at a time, I pulled a thread (snipping it in several shorter pieces), about 13-14 threads out from the edge of my last row of hooking. The pulled thread serves two purposes: it acts a guide for zigzagging (sewing on the hooking side of the gap), and also helps to reduce the amount of fraying after it's cut (since you mostly have just end pieces of cotton, not sideways pieces as well - they are either caught up in the stitches or cut off, since you cut in the 'ditch' where the thread used to be). I always use the stretch zig-zag (marked with the dotted line zigzag - each zig is comprised of 3 stitches, and so is each zag) to finish the edge of backing. It seems to be a lot more stable than any other option, including serging (IMHO, of course!)
Once we 'loaded' it onto the chute, I sat and stitched and mum manhandled the rug....moving it along the queue, trying to keep the unrolled section flat, pushing and pulling. Several times we remarked that we didn't know whose job was worse - but we agreed that neither job was easy! LOL!
After the first pass, the excess rug warp was trimmed off, and then we sewed a second row for insurance. Next the rug was unrolled and then re-rolled with another side facing out....and the process was repeated. And repeated. And repeated. And then we re-rolled it one last time, so that it was rolled along the short side - and it could fit in my car for the trip home again...
So now it's lying on the floor again in the middle of my living room, waiting for the serious hand-sewing that awaits. It's a brand new week, and I'm hoping that there is lots of time in the evenings for sitting and sewing....
