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= Latest News =
{{sewing}}
{{blackbox}}[[File:Sewingstation.jpg|200px|right]] You are in the Sewing Studio of Noisebridge [[upstairs]].
[[File:Sewing.jpg|300px|right]]
You see sewing machines, fabric, a large cutting table, sewing tools, and knitting machines.
*For the latest announcements, please subscribe to the email list here: https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/sewing/
'''EXITS:''' [[Upstairs]]
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'''Noisebridge's sewing guild hosts sewing events and maintains three industrial sewing machines, a variety of domestic sewing machines, and knitting machines.'''
*Brother SE400 Combination Computerized Sewing and 4x4 Embroidery Machine
* Open Project Night, an unstructured event in which participants brought their own projects for repair and alterations help, advice on techniques, materials, and machines, starting a new project with materials at the space, and just having fun sewing with fellow makers
*130-Stitch Computerized Sewing and Quilting (Brother XR1355)
* Sew With Knits, in which we went over how to operate the industrial serger, how to operate the domestic coverstitch, overview of domestic sewing machine stitch types appropriate for stretch knit material, and advice on participants' projects
==Past Events==
* In early 2019, we had a “Sewing Machine Fix-a-Thon” in which we serviced some of our sewing machines and determined what parts needed to be ordered.
We also have these sewing amenities:
* Giant ass table with cutting mat surface (50 inches x ? inches )
=HOW TO BE EXCELLENT BY NOT BREAKING THE MACHINES=
We have home machines and industrial machines, and the home machines are all, to varying degrees, much more breakable. They're consumer products, often designed and built with a modern “what is this ‘repair’ of which you speak?” mindset, not built to withstand abuse or rough handling.
To that end, here are some strong guidelines for how to Be Excellent and use the home sewing machines in ways that don't break them:
# '''First, always be gentle.''' Treat the machine like a puppy. It will bite you, die, or incur a huge bill if you damage it.
# '''Do not pull fabric through the machine.''' Let the feed dogs do the work, or drop them if you want to free-sew or embroider. Pulling work through the machine is a good way to bend or break the needle, damage the bobbin and/or bobbin case and/or shuttle, pull the shuttle out of phase, or otherwise damage something. You're lucky if it's the needle or bobbin; those are replaceable. Anything else takes the machine out of commission.
#* If fabric isn't feeding properly, you may need to adjust the presser foot pressure. See point #4.
# '''Always turn the handwheel the correct direction''' On most of our machines, this is '''towards you'''. If you can't remember, press lightly on the pedal and you'll be able to feel which way the handwheel wants to turn. Turning the handwheel the wrong way won't necessarily break the machine, but it can mess up your stitch, break your thread, or cause a snarl that can break the needle.
# '''Change the machine's configuration as you need, but put it back when you're done.''' Every machine should have a standard presser foot and a “universal” needle (size 90/14) loaded when not in use. It should be on the default settings for presser foot pressure and tension. Anyone who needs something different should make whatever changes they need, '''and''' change them back before they put the machine away/leave.
# '''Put the machine away when you're done/before leaving.''' The cutting table is not a machine storage rack.
# '''Keep the machine's parts with the machine.''' Some machines have a storage compartment on the front of the bed (the bottom portion of the machine where the bobbin is). The domestic machines have a kit for holding bobbins, feet, needles, spool caps, screwdrivers, and anything else necessary to using the machine. The pedal should be kept with the machine at all times, and should have a paper tag tied to it identifying which machine it belongs to. (Such tags are kept in a drawer in the sewing area.)
# '''Use the correct needle, and change the needle when needed.''' Always check which needle is loaded into the machine before you start sewing—make sure it's right for the type (woven vs. knit vs. solid) of fabric, the tightness of weave/knit, and the weight of the fabric.
#* Non-woven materials such as leather or vinyl require special “leather” needles, made to pierce solid objects. Knitted fabrics, including T-shirt fabric, require “ball point” needles, which are less likely to pierce/cut a yarn. Tight weaves such as microsuede may require “microtex” or “sharp” needles that can find their way between the yarns. Denim and heavy canvas may require “denim” (a.k.a. “jeans”) needles. Most normal woven fabrics will work with a “universal” needle.
#* If you're using the right kind of needle but it isn't going through/is skipping stitches or is stitching irregularly or with difficulty, try a heavier diameter or (if woven) a denim needle. Most likely the needle is not able to cleanly penetrate the fabric. Continuing to sew in this state is a good way to permanently bend (i.e., ruin) or break the needle.
#* Needles wear out! They are a consumable. If you're pretty sure you have the right kind and diameter of needle, change it out for another like one. If that works better, safely dispose of the worn needle—don't put it back for some other sucker to try.
# '''Avoid computerized machines unless you ''really'' need them.''' Computerized machines are much more delicate than mechanical machines. The best reason to use a computerized machine is it's the one with embroidery features and you need that. Otherwise, take a mechanical one such as the Kenmore 385 if it's available—they hold up better.
# '''Use the correct type of bobbin for the machine you're using.''' Bobbins come in a variety of types, including Class 15, Class 15J, Class 66, and numerous oddballs. This page lists the correct type of bobbin for each machine, and the same information should soon be stickered onto all of our machines. Any machine, otherwise working, may fail to sew correctly (skipped stitches, shuttle snarls, etc.) with the wrong kind of bobbin in it.
# '''Do not use a damaged or broken bobbin.''' If it's cracked, chipped, or bent, don't use it. Transfer the thread (if any) to a new bobbin of the same type (or of the type for the machine you're going to use), then chuck the busted bobbin in the trash.
=RESOURCES=
==Sewing Machines==
===Industrial Sewing Machines===
* [[Juki DDL-227 Straight Stitch]]
* [[Singer 251-12 Straight Stitch]]
* [[Juki LU-563 Walking Foot]]
* [[Juki MO-2416 Serger]] (subclass FF6-500)
*Shoe Patcher, hand cranked (not yet up and running)
===Domestic Sewing Machines===
*[[Bernette 55]]
*[[Singer 4166]]
*[[Brother XR135]]
*[[White E-6354]]
*[[Singer Stylist 533]]
*[[Kenmore 385]]
*Singer SEQS-6700 Embroidery Machine
*Coverstitch
===Other Amenities===
* Large table with cutting mat surface (50 inches x ? inches )
* Irons and Ironing board
* Irons and Ironing board
* Sewing/craft/fashion library
* Domestic knitting machines
* Buttons, buckles, zipper, grommets, etc
* 1 dress form
* Full length mirror
* Big donation bins of extra thread and fabric you can use for projects
===Before donating a machine to Noisebridge===
* lots of odds and ends
* 2 dress forms
Please reach out to a maintainer. We're looking to simplify our fleet. At the very least, this will mean getting rid of home machines that don't meet certain criteria (Class 15 bobbins, drop-in bobbin case, ''works'', etc.). We may go further than that and standardize on one model, but that's TBD.
- Full length mirror
The Community Thrift Store on Valencia would also probably love to have it.
= Tips =
=== Sewing Machine Usage Tips ===
* Please DO NOT unthread the sewing machines unless you must. (e.g. to remove a spool of thread, simply cut it close to the spool so that the next person can simply tie a knot with the next thread and pull it all the way through to the needle). This is most important for the serger.
* Please DO NOT unthread the sewing machines unless you must. (e.g. to remove a spool of thread, simply cut it close to the spool so that the next person can simply tie a knot with the next thread and pull it all the way through to the needle). This is most important for the serger.
* Needles, bobbins, and other parts are located in labeled drawers underneath the pegboard (PLEASE KEEP IT ORGANIZED). Also check the drawers attached to each sewing machine table.
* Domestic and industrial machines use different needles, bobbins, and feet, so check to make sure you are using the right kind. The industrial machines each have a kit hanging on the pegboard behind them. Domestic machine supplies are either in a kit on the table, or are located in labeled drawers on the white cabinet (PLEASE KEEP IT ORGANIZED).
** The closest place to get parts is at Apparel City, on Howard between 11th & 12th.
** The closest place to get domestic machine parts and supplies is Fabric Outlet on Mission between 17th & 18th st. Industrial machine parts are only available by mail order (if you know anyone local please let us know)
** Needles may differ between machines and come in sizes (10, 12, 14, 16, etc.). The higher numbers are heavier gauge needles suitable for thicker fabrics. Leather needles have a tiny blade at the tip. Don't use a leather needle for other fabrics, though, it will cut the threads rather than squeezing between them, leaving holes that may start rips.
** Needles may differ between machines and come in sizes (10, 11, 12, 14, 16, etc.). The higher numbers are heavier gauge needles suitable for thicker fabrics.
**Needles for the straight stitch machines must be inserted with the scarf facing right. Please check the respective manuals.
** Needles also come in different types, including (this is an abridged list; look to other sites for more complete lists):
***Jersey: Has a ball point, for knitted fabrics (including T-shirt fabric).
***“Universal”: Moderately sharp, for most woven fabrics. Denim needles are the same but more rigid, for tighter weaves of thick yarns (like denim or canvas).
***Microtex needles are the sharpest, for tight weaves of thin yarns, like microsuede or nylon.
***Leather needles have a tiny blade at the tip, for cutting holes in leather and vinyl. Don't use a leather needle for woven or knitted fabrics: The blade will cut the threads rather than squeezing between them, leaving holes that may start rips.
**Needles for the industrial straight stitch and walking foot machines must be inserted with the scarf facing right. Please check the respective manuals.
* If you've never operated a sewing machine before, ask some people at Noisebridge (Kyle or Ely). Sewing machines are not self-explanatory and this page does assume a certain amount of prior general knowledge.
* If you've never operated a sewing machine before please attend a Sewing 101, which happens every 2nd friday, before you use our machines on your own. The class fills up and has a waitlist, so we ask that you only come if you've secured a spot on Meetup. Sewing machines are delicate creatures and we want to minimize the amount of breakage.
**Read the manual and do some research online.
**Read the manual! You'll probably learn something even if you've been sewing for a long time.
**Printed manuals for the two Juki Machines and the Thompson are located in a grey binder on the bookshelf
**Printed manuals for each industrial machine are in the gray binder on the bookshelf. We don't have manuals printed for all the domestics, but a Google search should bring them up.
*Use scraps for testing to determine thread tension and sewing speed.
*Use scraps for testing to determine thread tension and sewing speed.
*Recommended reading:
===Recommended reading===
[http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3751/machine-needle-know-how About sewing machine needles]
[http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3751/machine-needle-know-how About sewing machine needles]
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==Winding a Bobbin==
==Winding a Bobbin==
*Juki DDL-227 & Juki LU-563
**To wind a bobbin, place the empty bobbin on the horizontal spindle to the right of the machine body (near the hand wheel). Run a second thread through the upper holder, down to the tensioner at the back of the right side of the machine, in line with the spindle. Thread the end through one of the holes in the bobbin side, from the inside to the outside. Press the lever to push the spindle down in contact with the sewing machine belt. While holding the thread end so it doesn't just whip out of the bobbin, press the pedal to run a couple of inches (if there were fabric in the machine). Soon enough you can let go of the thread end as it will have been caught by windings on top of it. If you are doing a lot of sewing, you can start a new bobbin before the current one is empty, and let it wind up as you sew. When the bobbin is full, the lever will automatically snap out away from the belt and stop winding thread.
== Repairing a Sewing Machine ==
=== Juki DDL-227 & Juki LU-563 ===
* If a sewing machine is actually broken and non functional, as opposed to just you can't figure out how to make it work, please call Billy from Apparel City at 415-816-8645 (mobile) and schedule an appointment for him to come fix it.
*To wind a bobbin, place the empty bobbin on the horizontal spindle to the right of the machine body (near the hand wheel). Run a second thread through the upper holder, down to the tensioner at the back of the right side of the machine, in line with the spindle. Thread the end through one of the holes in the bobbin side, from the inside to the outside. Press the lever to push the spindle down in contact with the sewing machine belt. While holding the thread end so it doesn't just whip out of the bobbin, press the pedal to run a couple of inches (if there were fabric in the machine). Soon enough you can let go of the thread end as it will have been caught by windings on top of it. If you are doing a lot of sewing, you can start a new bobbin before the current one is empty, and let it wind up as you sew. When the bobbin is full, the lever will automatically snap out away from the belt and stop winding thread.
** He usually charges around $80 per hour, plus parts.
** Email the [https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/sewing/|sewing list] and people will chip in to cover this. If you can't manage this process, email the sewing list and find someone else who can. Also, please put a note on the machine so people know what is going on with it.
= Sewing Machines =
=== Most home sewing machines ===
The bobbin winder is usually on the top of the machine near the right corner (right being the side with the handwheel). It should look like a short spindle that can't be removed and sticks up about half an inch (the thickness of a bobbin) from a flat round surface.
== High Speed Lock stitch (Juki DDL 227) ==
Place a bobbin on the spindle, then:
*[[Juki Maintenance Notes]] - Replacing the counter knife, needle bar, thread guides, etc.
* On some machines, the handwheel can be pulled out to switch from sewing to bobbin-winding. (Push it back in when you're done winding bobbins.)
These were originally written for our old DDL-5550-6 machine but the 227 is very similar.
* On the big Singer machine, the handwheel has a part that flips up to engage the bobbin-winder.
* On the Brother machines, the bobbin spindle can be slid between the left (sewing) and right (winding). In the latter position, a brake slightly intersects the bobbin and will stop it from getting over-wound.
=== Overview ===
Once the machine is in winding mode and is powered on, press the pedal slightly and make sure thread is going onto the bobbin properly. Once it's winding properly, floor the pedal until the bobbin is fully wound (some machines will stop the bobbin automatically; others may require you to pay attention).
* General fabrics, light-weight materials and medium weight materials.
** '''Not for leather or book binding.''' Please use the right tool for the job.
* Clutch motor (fast!)
*Recommended thread size of Tex-40 in the DDL
=== Manual for Juki DDL-227 ===
Remember to switch the machine back to sewing mode when you're done winding bobbins!!!
PDF - https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1005359/Juki-Ddl-227.html
== Straight Stitch Walking Foot (Juki LU-563) ==
== Repairing a Sewing Machine ==
Before declaring a machine broken, try the steps on [[Sewing/Troubleshooting]] first.
*This is a high tension machine. You must press the knee lifter to pull thread through. This will release the tension.
**Conversely, DO NOT run into the knee lifter at all while sewing. This will release the tension and your stitches will be too loose.
*Pressing back or letting go of the pedal will engage the brake. Slightly depress the pedal to release the brake. You must do this to use the hand wheel
=== Overview ===
* Medium weight and heavy weight materials, leather and vinyl
** Not for light-weight materials!
* Clutch Motor
** This machine is VERY fast
*Horizontal Bobbin
*Recommended thread size Tex-70 in the walking foot
=== Manual for Juki LU-563 ===
PDF - http://keysew.com/Webpages/DemoImages/Juki_LU-563_Instruction_Keyfooter.pdf
== Five-thread Overlock Serger (Juki MO-2416) ==
*Pulling fabric out of the machine may cause thread breaks. It is best to feed thread with the pedal when removing your workpiece.
*DO NOT UNTHREAD THE SERGER. It takes about 30 minutes and a lot of patience to thread this machine. However, if you are an experience user of industrial sergers you will be able to thread this machine quickly. Using tweezers helps. Also, using the correct thread for the correct machine is essential. Good Luck and happy sewing.
=== Overview ===
This machine is not made for knits. It is made for wovens. It is a five spool. It has a clutch motor and this is the reason that it goes so very rapidly. The overlock sews to prevent fray. However, the machine make a chain stitch at the same time. For example, if you were to look inside of your jeans, you can observe these methods. A chain stitch and overlock. This type of machines is used for medium weight fabric.
*This machine has a knife placed to cut the fabric as you sew, and it *is possible* to cut your finger badly on this knife if you are not careful. BE CAREFUL. This machine also can go extremely, sometimes startlingly, fast.
=== Manual for Juki MO-2416 ===
If a sewing machine is actually broken and non functional, as opposed to just you can't figure out how to make it work, please call Billy from Apparel City at 415-816-8645 (mobile) and schedule an appointment for him to come fix it.
* He usually charges around $80 per hour, plus parts.
* Email the [https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/sewing/|sewing list] and people will chip in to cover this. If you can't manage this process, email the sewing list and find someone else who can. Also, please put a note on the machine so people know what is going on with it.
* PDF - [[Media:JukiMO240424142416.pdf]]
= Sewing Machines =
== Brother SE400 Embroidery Machine ==
This machine is awesome, and can do many different stitches as well as CNC embroidery.
It's usually stored on the wall of the sewing area. It looks like a home sewing machine but is as expensive as an industrial one and is many people's favorite machine.
[[Embroidery Machine]]
== 130-Stitch Computerized Sewing and Quilting (Brother XR1355) ==
== 130-Stitch Computerized Sewing and Quilting (Brother XR1355) ==
'''Works''' as of 2021-12-28
*This machine is stored away in one of the sewing area cubbies.
This machine is on the home sewing machine table (Table 3).
=== Overview ===
=== Overview ===
*This machine does 130 different stitches including lots of cool decorative flowers and patterns. It is also the only machine that can do a zig-zag stitch.
* This machine does 130 different stitches including lots of cool decorative flowers and patterns.
* Bobbin: Clear plastic, class 15 ([https://www.joann.com/brother-sa156-clear-plastic-class-15-bobbin/16386419.html Brother SA156]). Please use bobbins in Table 3 toolbox.
=== Manual for Brother XR1355 ===
=== Manual for Brother XR1355 ===
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*Spanish copy located on bookshelf in grey binder.
*Spanish copy located on bookshelf in grey binder.
[[Category:Pages with a Noisebridge Tiny URL]]
== Grand Reopening Poster ==
Antonio dove down on my dick again, and vigorously rubbed the head of it along the back of his throat. He wrapped each of his hands around one of my softball-sized balls and pulled them down, stretching the sack out. He squeezed them like cow teats. I swear I could feel cum forced out of them and into the base of my dick. I pushed down on his head with both hands, determined to cum this time. At each stroke, when his lips encircled the base of my dick, Antonio’s tongue slipped outside his mouth and slurped on my balls. Occasionally he sucked one of them into his mouth.
“Antonio’s back looks impossibly huge from over here,” Clint said, although I couldn’t concentrate much on him. “The crevice where his thick lats attach to the spine is so deep now. And his lats spread so wide.” Clint inhaled his dick again, moaning at the double pleasure he was giving himself. He sounded close to cumming himself.
== Singer Simple 3229 sewing machine ==
'''Works''' as of 7-17-2021
Antonio sucked hard up the length of my dick. His long snake tongue was wrapped around it, pulling. The head of my cock was swollen. On the down stroke I knew I would finally cum, but Antonio let my cock fall out of him mouth. He stood and dropped his pants. His dick rose up to his chest in an instant. It was darker than the olive skin on the rest of his body. It was cocoa brown, latticed with hundreds of veins, thick and thin. The head was purplish-brown. It brushed through the field of his straight chest hair. Antonio raised my legs by the ankles and positioned my ass to impale it. Antonio slid just the head inside at first and strained.
*Bobbin: [https://www.singeronline.com/si15clbo.html Class 15]. Use bobbins in the toolbox on Table 3.
“Antonio’s unique talent is that he can make just the head of his dick swell to half again the thickness of his cock. It makes the strokes more intense,” Clint said.
=Specialty Machines=
Antonio dropped his hands to his side so that only his dick was touching me. Slowly, he slid it deeper and deeper.
== Brother Coverstitch Serger ==
'''Works''' as of 2022-02-15
This machine is on Table 4. This machine is useful to alter and finish clothes (hems).
“You can feel it, can’t you? You can feel it sliding in, and every inch is ecstasy.”
At the deepest point Antonio strained again. He and I both groaned loudly. Another pool of precum had collected in the valleys of my abs. Antonio pulled back, just as slowly, then pushed in.
*narrow cover stitches (no tri-cover stitch as the third needle was broken in the head of the machine.
*should work for a variety of fabrics
“Antonio has remarkable control. He can fuck you real slow like that on the verge of an orgasm for hours. Eventually every stroke is such pure ecstasy you don’t care if you every cum.”
Clint chomped down on his dick some more and jacked it with both his hands. He sucked and fucked himself quicker now. I could see his throat tense and heard him scream a muffled scream. His hands jacked more vigorously along his dick. It swelled and cum began to gush out of the sides of his mouth. He pulled it out and it squirted six feet in the air. His head flopped back on the sofa and he just laughed as he stroked it.
=== Repair Instructions ===
Finally Antonio’s pace quickened. He was so excited now, I could tell even he was beginning to loose control. He poked and jabbed the length of my ass, and I rewarded him with anal orgasm that milked his dick to a climax. While he came, he pulled my dick back in his mouth and I shot down his throat.
{{#ev:youtube|IG23Sy5pS0g||center|A huge thanks Farley and Ken for putting together this video!|frame||true|middle|width=50%}}
== Leather Stitching Machine ==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zawvl5ZZIdI
During my first week at the house, I fucked around with just about everyone who lived there, and a lot of the people they brought home. The only man who remained unseen was David, the owner of the house. Clint and Antonio, who had been lovers even before they were infected, kind of adopted me as a regular third.
== Knitting Machine ==
We have a [[Industrial Knitting Machine|Raynen CHJX-1-52 52-inch flat knitting machine]].
I learned I wasn’t the only one who heard the voice. All of us had heard it at one time or another. Nor was I the only one it took control of. When it was imperative to the virus’ existence it seized control, but sometimes it took control just because it wanted was us to experience something new. In that respect it could be like a demon, possessing us, or like a more forceful version of a little devil on the shoulder, making us live out our secret desires without having to feel responsible for our actions later. It stretched us. The men who had been infected the longest tended to be the ones most comfortable will all aspects of their sexual desires, because the virus made them explore them all.
In June of 1981 an article appeared in the New York Times that sent a chill through the straight world. A number of doctors that treated homosexual patients told reporters that several of their gay patients had reported an unusual condition. The patients reported significant increases in their libido as well as rapid weight gains – as much as 10 pounds in a single week -- and enlargement of the genitals. Doctors had no clues as to the cause of the condition. Some suggested that it might be cause by a sexually transmitted virus, since the behavioral profiles of the patients reporting the condition often included frequent sexual encounters, often with multiple sex partners before the condition developed. Other suspected a mutagenic condition brought on by drug abuse. Many patients reportedly were frequent users of recreational drugs. Although the initial effects of the condition did not seem to endanger the patient’s health, Doctors were concerned that there might be long term ill effects. They also speculated that the condition could lead to a serious rise in STD infections among the population as a whole, due to the increased sexual activity of those infected.
The whole situation seemed a little unreal to the majority of the gay community. A virus that turned men into studs was fantasy come to life. That made most gay men skeptical of the whole story. Nevertheless the story spawned countless jokes. Friends teased each other that they were infected if they seemed more horny than normal, or if they started to out on a little extra size. Not many took it seriously. Then someone would encounter one of us somewhere and then, for at least a few hours, they became a believer.
== '''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQY5-UepEk Watch Video Tour March 2023]''' ==
Clint, Antonio and were on our way across the country that June. They were taking me to see Key West. Clint bought a 1978 Cadillac convertible and the three of us took turns driving -- not that we got very far in a day. It took us a few hours to get out of bed every morning, we made too many fuck stops, and usually knocked off early. Clint really got into seducing truck drivers. It had been a fantasy of his for years. We must have lost three days total at truck stops.
= Manual Snap Setting Tools =
We have hand presses but no dies for them.
We were finally getting close to Florida after two weeks of traveling when we decided we weren’t going to be able to drive long enough that day to get over the Georgia state line. Antonio was driving. Clint had opened the fly of his 501s and was slurping on his dick. Antonio nearly drove off the road when he came, but it wasn’t enough of a release for him. We pulled over to a small, dilapidated motel along the highway at the edge of a town so small the welcome sign hung on the first tree and the farewell sign hung on the second. The man behind the counter in the office didn’t care much for us. At first he didn’t want to rent a room to us. He said he didn’t have one with enough beds for three men. Clint finally agreed to rent two rooms next to each other, a single and a double.
There are a few misc. hand-setting tools in the grommets box
I was laying face down on the bed in the double room with Antonio plowing my ass, when there was a knock on our door. Neither one of us was interested in who was there, but the knock was persistent.
= Scissors =
“Sheriff’s Deputy, sir! I’m afraid I have to insist you answer the door.”
The sewing station includes a variety of scissors, including straight scissors/shears, a pair of pinking shears, and a couple other specialty scissors.
Antonio ground harder into my ass with the full length of his sixteen incher, and all I could concentrate on was that hot poker sliding up my super-sensitized large intestine. When the door burst open, we still didn’t stop fucking, but both our heads turned.
'''DO NOT USE FABRIC SCISSORS FOR ANYTHING THAT ISN'T FABRIC.''' Paper and other non-fabric things will rapidly dull blades to the point where we need to sharpen them again to use them on fabric.
“Holy – the guy at the desk was right!” It was a deputy sheriff. He stood spread eagle, gun drawn. “Both of you are under arrest for the crime of Sodomy. Stand up and put your hands on your heads!”
There are some “paper only” (i.e., pre-ruined) scissors on the tools wall since we know people will look in the sewing section for scissors. There are also some “fabric only” (i.e., not yet ruined) scissors that should only ever be used for fabric.
Antonio groaned with intense pleasure as he pulled his dick back from my ass real slow until only the head was inside, exposing almost its entire length to the deputy.
Also related: There is a sharpening stone on the tools wall in the sewing station.
“I’d be happy to help you out, officer,” Antonio said, “but I got my dick up this stud’s tight ass.”
= Thread snips =
The officer’s eyes were as wide as saucers. It was plain that he was staring at the Antonio’s groin, my ass and the fourteen inches of giant boner that connected them, as if the sight of over five hundred pounds of naked muscled man flesh wasn’t enough already!
Thread snips are the small scissor-like tools used for cutting the thread sticking out of a work so you can remove the work from the machine.
“You ever seen a sixteen inch dick before, officer? I don’t suppose you have. Let me tell you, all these extra inches make fucking three times as much fun! Makes it kind of hard for me to concentrate on anything but my dick, you know? See how good it looks, how it glistens, all slick from my own precum.” Antonio slides it in again real slow. He moaned and shivered. “Makes his ass real slick inside. Makes it feel soooo good.” Antonio decided it was time to give the cop his next shock. He reached under my stomach and pulled me to my knees, exposing my own sixteen-inch stone-hard boner. It curled away from my rocky abs and then back into my sternum, just below the tremendous bulge of my pecs. It was nearly purple from the stimulation of Antonio’s fuck. Precum dribbled from its fist size head to a pool on the bed. The deputy gasped.
Thread snips shouldn't be used to cut fabric—use the fabric shears (scissors) or rotary cutters for that. Neither should they be used on non-fabric things like paper or tape.
I tensed my arms and my legs as Antonio continued fucking me. I was already flushed, but now the veins in my body started to swell. The cuts between my muscles deepened so that each muscle looked like an individual steel cable. All the cop could do was stare.
There are three pairs of thread snips hanging from the tools wall in the sewing section.
Clint walked in the room behind him wearing a bathrobe. He had been showering in the next room. He stood behind him and reached around in front to take his gun out of his hand. Then he shut the door. “I see we have a guest. Let’s make him more comfortable.” Clint let the robe fall to the floor. I suppose our arresting officer was quite big by most standards. He had definitely lifted weights. His arms and legs were snug inside his uniform. He must have been around five feet ten and probably weighed about 220. But with Clint behind him he looked small. Clint’s shoulders were huge round balls of muscle. His biceps were so big and thick there was barely room for them to fit between his deltoids and his forearms. Each of his quadriceps were so large they looked like normal-sized thighs struggling to get loose from the others. Clint reached around from behind and undid the officer’s belt. Clint reached into the officer’s pants and pulled out a sizable dick and the officer’s balls. The dick was rock hard.
= Rotary cutters =
“Have you ever seen two men with such gigantic dicks?” Clint whispered into the deputy’s ear as he massaged the deputy’s dick with his broad, muscular hands. “It’s hard to believe anyone could take a dick that size up his ass, isn’t it? But you want to try it badly don’t you? I can tell. Antonio and Dick are both my lovers. I take them up the ass all the time, and it feels so goood! Antonio can fuck better than any man I’ve ever had. He can fuck you so fast it feels like there’s a two-foot vibrator up your ass, and cum every couple minutes for hours. Or he can slide it in and out so slow its like exquisite torture, and not give you relief until you almost pass out.”
These look similar to pizza cutters but are '''NOT FOR FOOD USE''' (both because it trashes the blade and because the blades are not food-safe: new blades are coated in machine oil).
As he worked the deputy’s dick over, Clint was rubbing both his nipples with the forefinger and thumb of the other hand and poking at his ass with his own giant prick. The deputy was completely oblivious to Clint’s manhandling. He was mesmerized by Antonio’s dick sliding in and out of my ass, our loud moans and the glistening of our rock hard muscles as we slammed into each other. Clint popped the buttons on his shirt and pulled him out of it. He pulled his pants down and positioned him under me, with his lips less than an inch from my dick. He was on his back under my chest.
All of our rotary cutters are 45mm, except for one, which is 60mm but has no blade. It's unclear whether we'll keep that one, since we would need to keep 60mm blades in stock and that would mean figuring out where to keep them and what to use them for.
“Go ahead, officer. Take it in your mouth,” Clint coaxed.
== How to use ==
The deputy opened his lips and I stuck in my prick as deeply as I could without losing hold of Antonio’s hot dick. The first contact of his tongue on my dick head made me spurt precum again. He swallowed it like honey.
Each rotary cutter has a cutting (blade extended) position and a safe (blade retracted) position. The Olfa ergonomic cutters will also spring back to retracted automatically, and can't be extended unless the safety button is pushed to the unlocked side.
“Stick your chin up, officer. Line up your mouth and your throat, and you can take him deeper.”
Rotary cutters should be used on a cutting mat such as the one on the main sewing station table. Usually you want a straight cut, so you should use an acrylic ruler to guide the blade.
It was hard to tell where genuine lust left off and Clint’s super seduction power began, but the deputy obeyed and I pumped three more inches inside.
Rotary cutters are EXTREMELY sharp, so be careful. Please keep the cutter blade-side-up so it's less likely to come into accidental contact with the table or anything on it—if you can see the blade, you can avoid contact with it.
“Suck on it, officer. Suck it hard, like a teat. What you get from that monster dick is going to be the biggest reward of your life. That’s it! Suck it in deeper. You can get another couple inches in if you try!”
=== Safety tips ===
He already had about ten inches inside. Antonio was laughing at the sight of him beneath me and bucking at my ass harder to force my dick deeper in his throat. I leaned down to the deputy’s groin and sucked down his dick. It was all he needed to convince him to go deeper on mine. The veins on his neck stood out farther as he drew in all but the last two inches. My softball-sized nuts were already high and tight against my enormous prick. They beat him in the face with every one of Antonio’s strokes. I wrapped my elongated tongue around his prick and pulled along its length. He sucked harder. Antonio bucked. The last two inches hit home. My dick swelled, straining his stuffed throat further, as my cum shot down its length and hit his throat hard. It kept firing as I pulled the head back up to his mouth so he could taste it. His own prick splattered in my mouth and he vacuumed mine down again. Eventually he stopped cumming, but I couldn’t. He let me pull my cock from his mouth and I poured cum over both our chests. The clenching in my ass pulled Antonio over the top. He fucked me fast and emptied himself inside until it became too much for my ass to hold, and the cum started splashing out around his prick.
*Follow an acrylic ruler.
*Keep your body (including fingers) out of the path of the blade.
*Only use a sharp blade. Don't use a rotary cutter with a dull or trashed blade. Change out the blade if you have to.
*Don't force it to cut if it's not cutting.
Clint pulled the deputy to his feet before I collapsed on the bed. But Clint wasn’t finished with him. I felt Antonio’s hands spread my ass cheeks as Clint continued to narrate. “Look at Dick’s ass, officer. See how deep the valley is between these enormous glutes. Look how tight his ass puckers, even after being fucked by Antonio’s monster prick. And see how the cum still seeps out of it. Don’t you want to lick it up, officer?”
== Maintenance ==
I felt the deputy’s hands spread my ass cheeks and his tongue lick my asshole.
Rotary cutters are mostly pretty foolproof. As long as you don't cut yourself, your ruler, wood, another rotary cutter, a 1973 Oldsmobile, or anything else that isn't fabric, the blade should enjoy a good, long life.
“Suck it down! Don’t let it go to waste! That’s right, stick your tongue inside and pull it out.”
But, every blade wears down eventually. Blade sharpeners exist, but we don't currently have one, and a sharpener can't save a chipped or bent blade.
His tongue inside my ass started my heart racing again. In the deep groove between the twin totems of my abdominal muscles, my dick was getting hard. I stuck my hand under my stomach and pulled at it.
If a blade can't be sharpened, there are new 45mm blades in the storage drawers along the wall.
“Why don’t you fuck him, officer? He’s ready. He wants it. Don’t you, Dick?”
=== Changing the blade ===
Clint guided his prick to my asshole. The deputy pushed. I relaxed enough to let him in the first few inches, then squeezed. He groaned. I pulled at his prick with my ass muscles and gradually drew him in. He dropped to his hands and slowly fucked in and out. He was no where near Antonio’s size, but he didn’t have to get too far in to hit my hot spot.
Different rotary cutters have different parts, but they all have these four, in this order:
“Look how thick his back muscles are! And those shoulders! You could play basketball with them! Does he have your dick in that hot vice grip of an ass? Doesn’t that make you want to scream?”
*Hub/screw
*Rotary cutter body
*Blade
*Nut
I couldn’t see Clint or the officer, but Antonio was standing in my line of sight, and he was slowly pulling on his hard dick as he grinned. Precum was shooting out of his dick head every few minutes. He spread it on his cock, massaged his balls with it, and worked it into his chest.
You should try to keep all of the parts (including those not listed—some cutters do have some bonus parts) in the correct order. If you get the order wrong, the blade might not spin freely or it might be too far from the cutter body. If that's the case, no biggie, just disassemble and try again.
The officer was so frantic that he couldn’t keep a steady rhythm. He poked hard and fast for a couple strokes, then slowly. It drove me wild. My ass muscles started to undulate around his dick and drool started dripping out of my open mouth. Finally I felt his dick swell inside me and his hot moist cum squirting. He collapsed on my back, panting.
No tools are needed.
“Oh, I bet that felt real good, didn’t it, officer?” I could hear the crackle of Clint’s moist hands working spit into his dick behind the cop. “But this is going to feel even better!” The officer’s dick jerked inside me. Clint had mounted him from behind. As Clint fucked the cop’s ass, the cop’s dick started to get harder again. The cop himself, though, was limp as a dishrag on top of my back. I could feel Clint having a field day with the cop’s ass. He was poking and prodding it from all angles. Antonio held his slick dick in front of my face. I opened my mouth and inhaled it. When it hit the hot spot in my throat, I moaned. Clint provided the motion for all of us. As he shoved his prick up the cop’s ass, it pushed the cop’s dick deeper into my ass, which shoved me forward and drove Antonio’s dick deeper down my throat. When Antonio’s dick had worked my throat past the point of no return, it spasmed and pulled him to orgasm. Simultaneously the cop’s dick brought my other end to orgasm. The jerking of my ass muscles around his dick drew another load of cum out of it, and the cop’s rectal spasms milked Clint’s dick dry.
#Remove the nut by hand, keeping your thumb on the hub/screw on the other side.
#Gently turn the cutter over and let the blade fall out onto your fingers, and any other parts onto the table.
#Sharpen or replace the blade.
#Put the blade onto the screw.
#Put the screw (with blade) into the cutter, and put all of the other parts, ending with the nut, onto the other side.
The next morning we left the exhausted, sleeping deputy in the room. Undoubtedly he had a tough time explaining an AWOL from his shift the night before and the rumpled, cum stained condition of his uniform, but that was just a bump in the road. In a few months, as his muscles swelled and his sex drive exploded, his life would really begin to change.
= Parts Needed =
Some of the parts (especially pedals and/or cords) for the sewing machines have, shall we say, installed a walking foot. Here's what we're currently missing:
=HISTORY=
*2008: Noisebridge began having sewing machines at [[83c]].
*2009: Rachel [[Industrial_Sewing_Machine_Donations|purchased industrial sewing machines]] from the sewing shop that formerly occupied Noisebridge's 2169 space with member donations and held its first [[Sewing Workshop]] at [[2169]].
*2015: Grand reopening event of the rebooted Sewing Station.
*2019: Sewing station moved over near the fire escape. Also, we did a Sewing Machine Fix-a-Thon and started holding training classes.
In a few months the condition came to be known as GRID (Gay Related Inordinate Development) in the press, although eventually the name was changed to AIDS (Acquired Inordinate Development Syndrome). The government ignored the situation at first. Some thought they ignored it because the condition only affected homosexual men. Others thought they ignored it because the new Republican administration was uncomfortable with sex in general. The predicted increase in STDs never materialized. In fact those of us that were infected found that the virus protected us from other STDs. Research into the condition by the medical establishment came to be hampered by the high dropout rate of the research participants once their infection matured and the virus took control of their behavior.
==Grand Reopening Poster ==
Some people suspected that the condition was caused by some bio-engineered virus that our government had created. Maybe they had been trying to wipe out the queers. No one knew what was causing it, but everyone presumed it was spread by sexual contact. When it hit the press that after heterosexuals were infected they lost interest in the opposite sex, a wave of panic swept through the homophobes. There was talk of a quarantine to protect the uninfected. Some men took unnecessary extra precautions, like not frequenting restaurants with gay waiters, or not sharing drinking cups with people they weren’t sure were straight. Many gay men were fired from their jobs in the panic. Incidents of violence against gay men increased.
[[File:Sewing-Area-Poster.jpg|none|300px]]
Most of this was just noise to those of us whose infection had matured. It was like coyotes baying at the moon in the distance. It didn’t seem conceivable any of this ever could hurt us. There were twelve of us living in the house at the end of 1982. Not many of us actually slept there every night. Most of us slept with strangers. Aaron, Clint, Antonio and I were the only regulars. When we spent the night with someone else, we tended to bring him home. Sometimes we shared, but mostly we kept the outsiders away from our friends, at least until we had had them ourselves a few times.
== Machines not currently available (location unknown or else) ==
No matter how much we fucked around, none of us could get completely sated. We were like tomcats, always on the prowl. I found Buena Vista Park to be a fruitful cruising ground, besides it was just across the street from home. I took regular walks through it that sometimes stretched into hours-long adventures. The park had developed a reputation for sexual activity even before the virus. Under a liberal mayor, the police took a hands-off approach. One police official was quoted in the newspaper as saying, “We don’t interfere with what goes on in the privacy of someone’s bush.” Some of the men who wandered the park made the pretense of walking their dogs. I never bothered.
====Brother XR1355====
Status: Location unknown as of 2023-04-20
130-Stitch Computerized Sewing and Quilting (Brother XR1355) Works as of 2021-12-28
This machine is on the home sewing machine table (Table 3).
Overview This machine does 130 different stitches including lots of cool decorative flowers and patterns. Bobbin: Clear plastic, class 15 (Brother SA156). Please use bobbins in Table 3 toolbox.
On a particularly warm winter day I took a long walk through the park. It was one of those December days in San Francisco when the temperature reached over 70 degrees for a few hours around noon. I took advantage of it by walking in a pair of jeans cutoffs without a shirt. My legs were so big that as I walked I could feel the flesh of my warm thighs rub against each other. Of course I got lots of stares.
====Singer Ultralock 14U64A serger====
Status: Broken as of 2023/02. Ready for discard
Type: Domestic serger
Year: probably 1990s
Notes:dropped when being carried by handle. On/off switch broken, possible replacement part found, just needs to be wired on. side plastic casing broken, could possibly be repaired with plastic molding material. Part not necessary to functioning, but nice to have to protect machine from dust
This is a four-thread overlock machine. It's evidently meant for knitted fabrics, as a silkscreened note on the upper-left of the front of the machine notes that it requires a Singer 2045 needle, which is a ball point.
The thread guides above the machine are on a pole that telescopes out. Make sure to raise it before using the machine; it works better that way.
From the other side of some dense underbrush I heard a struggle and some subdued voices. “What’s the matter, queer? I thought you liked me?” I stepped through the bushes to see three men threatening another man. Two of them were holding his arms behind him while the other one punched him.
====Brother Exedra E-40====
We've gotten rid of this machine (when we moved the sewing station over to the fire escape) but we still have the digitized manual: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Brother_E-40_Operation_Panel_Instruction_Manual.pdf
In an instant, I felt every muscle in my body tighten. My heart pounded like a bass drum at 4/4 time. Without even thinking, I lunged at the knees of the one punching him and knocked him to the ground. The virus had taken control of my limbs, and I was a passenger inside my own body. Before I could give him a punch he’d feel for a very long time, the ones who had been holding the victim down jumped on my back, but the two of them bounced off like flies. My chest heaving with anger, I turned the attacker over on his back and backhanded his jaw. As I stood up, one of the other two took a swing at me with a baseball bat. It splintered and broke in two against my chest. I grabbed the end that was still in my assailant’s hands and swung it hard, tossing him into his buddy.
====Kenmore Overlock 3/4D====
Manual: In Manuals Collection, also https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Overlock_34d_38516631.compressed.pdf
Then I heard a click.
====Brother SE400 Embroidery Machine====
'''currently missing''' as of 2021-07-14
This machine is awesome, and can do many different stitches as well as CNC embroidery.
It's usually stored on the wall of the sewing area. It looks like a home sewing machine but is as expensive as an industrial one and is many people's favorite machine.
* [[Embroidery Machine]]
* Bobbin: Class 15 ([https://www.joann.com/brother-sa156-clear-plastic-class-15-bobbin/16386419.html Brother SA156])
“I wouldn’t move if I were you.” It was the man who’d been punching. He had a handgun pointed at me.
====Pfaff Creative 1471 sewing machine====
'''Location unknown''' as of 2021-7-14
This machine has a bobbin case, so it requires a little bit more knowledge to change out the bobbin than newer machines that have a top drop-in bobbin.
*Bobbin: Special metal bobbins. There's a parts drawer specifically for Pfaff bobbins.
As though everyone else in the world had slowed to a snail’s pace, all the motion around me stopped. My thighs tensed and I leapt at the guy with the gun, but he didn’t even see me move until he was down on the ground and the gun was in my hands. When I pointed it at him and stood up, he was terrified. He couldn't believe that anything could move that fast.
====Singer CG-590-C====
Manual: In Manuals Collection
“Chill, man. I wasn’t going to shoot you,” he begged. The man whose jaw I’d smacked was moaning on the ground. The other two men were standing to either side of me, still as statues.
====White YM-43-8====
Manual: Unknown
The voice inside my head was took control of the voice from my throat. It was an octave deeper than my own already bass voice. “Then you won’t be needing it at all,” it said through me. My index finger held the barrel, my thumb was on the grip and I squeezed them together. The barrel of the gun bent in my fingers like rubber. I tossed it on the ground over my shoulder.
====Singer 621-B====
Manual: Unknown
“Are you okay?” I asked the victim. His mouth was bloody and his shirt was torn, and he looked dazed, but otherwise he seemed okay. He nodded silently. “You can go now. I’ll take care of these three.”
====Singer Heavy Duty 4423 sewing machine====
'''Broken''' as of 2019-11-04: Shuttle pops up out of bobbin race, resulting in failure to make stitches and internal pressure upon the bobbin race door.
Has a top drop-in bobbin. Likely to become our workhorse, as the Heavy Duty is a sturdy mechanical machine.
Has a one-step buttonhole feature with a plastic buttonhole foot. Tricky to use but handy if you know how.
A knob on the top of the machine, near the slot where the take-up lever pops up, enables adjusting the presser foot pressure. Like top thread tension, this should generally not be messed with and should be put back after a job that does require adjusting it, but changing the presser foot pressure makes sense in certain circumstances:
*For thick works such as three or more layers of denim (e.g., when hemming denim garments), reduce the presser foot pressure in order to be able to drive over the inseam and outseam.
*For light works made of thin or sheer fabrics, or slippery fabrics, you may need to increase the pressure to ensure the feed dogs can properly feed (all layers of) the work.
'''Always put the presser foot pressure back how it was when you're done!!!''' Setting up future machine-users for difficulty/failure is un-excellent.
My eyes locked on the man standing on my right. "Walk over to him" – I nodded toward the man standing on my left. He did. "Stand closer," I said. He stood with his nose an inch from the other man's face. "Look in his eyes, at his lips. Ever wonder what those lips would feel like wrapped around your dick? Or brushing against your own? Kiss him."
====Automatic Snap Setting Machines====
In November 2020 we received a generous donation of two Automatic Snap Machines worth over $4000 from Craig Spring http://www.brotus.com !
Their lips brushed each other lightly.
One pair (one female, one male) of fully automatic, electric powered, 20 line, snap setting machines. These are older model machines manufactured by the Ho Hung Ming company in Taiwan (https://www.hohm.com).
"Passionately!"
They have a US location at: Ho Hung Ming USA Enterprise, 13525 Alma Ave, Gardena, CA 90249, Phone: 3103274847.
Their mouths opened and they started to suck each other's mouth. Their arms still hung limp at their sides, but I could see their pants start to bulge. It made me hard to watch them.
One of the advantages of these older machines is that they are simple mechanical machines built to last. Like an old car, they are easier to repair than newer ones. In 22 years, he never needed to repair these machines. They still run like a beast.
Though I looked like the puppet master to them, I was really a puppet myself. My words and my deeds were still not my own. My breath came in quick, shallow gulps. My skin tingled. From the way this was making us feel, I knew that the guest inside my body wasn’t yielding control anytime soon. Although I write ‘I’ from here on as I describe the rest of this scene, ‘I’ doesn’t really describe the person who took these actions. I only use the word because the vernacular doesn’t exist to describe the entity taking these actions using my body. It is only shorthand.
As there exists no manual for these machines, Craig and DK gave a servicing and use demonstration on Nov 15, 2020 via Jitsi and X uploaded it to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2ozToy38Q
I pulled the man who had drawn the handgun to his feet and wrapped a triple-thick arm around his neck, holding the back of his head to my face, in a way meant to feel as affectionate as it felt menacing. After a long minute of silence, I reached a hand into the shirt of my captive and pulled it open, ripping the buttons off. I unbuckled his belt, and undid his pants fly. I reached my hands inside his pants and pulled out his dick and balls. They were average. I tugged at them and plopped them down over his jeans. His hands clawed my forearm, but I held him tight. I slid my free hand into his shirt and rubbed his stomach. It was lightly dusted in hair. His pecs were small, but firm. I tweaked one of his nipples and hyper-extended my tongue to lick his ear. “This isn’t so bad, is it?” I slipped my hand down the between his buttocks and fingered his asshole. He was clenching it tight. “I could make this very pleasurable for you, but after what you tried to do, maybe our first fuck should hurt like Hell.”
Photos are at https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/automatic-snap-setting-machines-donation-instructions/2132
I grabbed both his wrists and held them together behind his back and released his neck. He jerked his arms to pull free. “I can squeeze tighter, and I will if you keep struggling. I can squeeze so tight the bones in your wrists will shatter. Or I can yank back when you pull with your shoulders and dislocate both of them.” He stopped struggling.
[[Category:Pages with a Noisebridge Tiny URL]]
{{guilds}}
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. Maybe he thought talking would only encourage me. I asked again and tugged on his wrists.
“Tim! My name is Tim.”
“Tim, I’m going to let your wrists go. You may have thought you would run away if I did that, but right now your intrigued by my body. You want another look at it.”
I released him. He turned around and stared at me. His eyes wandered up and down.
“I’m big, but I bet I don’t look big enough to be as strong as I am, or as quick. But you’ve never seen a body like this before, have you? Not even in pictures. My skin is so thin you can see the striations of the muscle fibers under them. My muscles are so thick they look like they shouldn’t even fit on my frame. I bet you wonder what it feels like to be strong enough to bend steel, or to make hard wood splinter. Maybe you can’t feel that right now, but you could feel me. Touch me.
Tim laid his palm on my bulging pec. His dick was pointing straight up by now.
“Hard to believe I could feel so much like flesh and still feel as hard as rock, isn’t it? Let your hand slid over the edge of it. Feel that ridge at the bottom of my pec where it bends back into my sternum. Feel the start of my stomach muscles underneath.” Tim’s eyes were wide as his hands felt the individual bumps of my abs, each of them large enough and prominent enough to be separate muscles, not ridges of the same slab of beef. I set my broad muscular hand on his head on pushed him to his knees.
As he knelt in front of me I undid my own pants and pulled my half-hard dick from inside my pants real slow. His eyes grew wide as more and more of it became visible, and he realized the whole thing was going up his virgin ass. I smiled and my dick jumped an inch as the blood engorged it and it stretched out to its full sixteen inches. It breached the distance between my groin and his face. The head of it bumped against his nose. He dodged it. It kept growing until it hit him again.
“You’re going to want to lubricate this as much as you can,” I told him. “The more spit soaked you get it, the less it will hurt when I fuck your ass. If your lucky, maybe you’ll get it to spurt some pre-cum in your mouth to help out. I wouldn’t try to get back at me by biting it, either. Remember how that baseball bat broke on my chest? Well, my dick is just as hard as my chest. You bite down hard and you’ll only break your teeth.”
I looked over at the other two assailants. Both of their dicks were out and one of them had them mashed together in his hand. The one facing Tim and I dropped to his knees on Tim’s example and licked his friend’s dick, tentatively at first.
I positioned my dick in front of Tim’s mouth, pried his lips open with two fingers, and pulled his head forward with my other hand. “Open wide.” About four inches of it stuffed his mouth before he could pull away. It was extra hot and wet, and I felt still more blood pound into my penis. I tilted his head back to get a good angle at his throat and pulled out a little. “Take a deep breath.” He gasped. I held on to his hair and I shoved. I got about half it in while he gagged. His face turned red and the veins in his neck stood out as far as his eyes. His throat clenched tight around the upper third of my dick. I pulled out of his throat and he gasped again. As I pushed forward again he bit down hard on my dick, but it only made the downward stroke more pleasurable as his teeth scrapped along my dick. It felt so good that I found myself plunging deeper this time and I lost my first load. He struggled to get it out of his throat as I poured a quart of cum into his stomach. On the last squirt I pulled back and put some on his tongue. When I withdrew he tired to spit it out, but I grabbed his chin and held his mouth shut. “Swallow it, pussy-boy! Or the rest of what I do to you will be even worse than what you are already imagining!” He held it in the back of his mouth for a minute. I raised my hand to slap his face, and he swallowed.
I reached down for his wrists and yanked up as I twisted him around. “Turn around, boy. You’ve only had half the experience.” I pushed his face down into the dirt and pulled down his pants. I positioned my cum drenched cock at his asshole and thrust my hips forward. He stifled a scream as the first half of my dick disappeared. He was extremely tight, but that only made me want to get deeper inside of him. I pulled his butt up from the ground and pushed harder. His sphincter was squeezing so tight, exciting me so much I could hardly breath. And as I pulled his ass back toward my groin, I felt his dick. It was hard as iron. Deeper and deeper I pushed.
With half a foot to go he started to push into me and arc his back. We both strained. Inch after hard-won, excruciating inch disappeared inside his ass. His sphincter spasmed, making me want to bury myself inside him even more. Three inches left, two inches, and finally one. When the last inch was buried and his ass clenched tight at the loose skin of my scrotum, I ground around inside him wanting more dick to bury, and he squeezed me tightly, proud he had engulfed to whole thing.
As I started my first, slow backstroke he moaned loudly. His ass held tight to my dick. The intense pleasure made me forget all about punishing him just as completely as it washed away all his fear. Every stroke was almost as good as cumming. I don’t know how long we fucked, because we both lost sense of time. Were we both in such a transcendent state that when I began to cum, it startled us both. The ejaculations were long and more forceful than any I’d had before. I grabbed his cock as I continued to fuck him. I hadn’t even begun to stroke his dick when he fired off an ejaculation of his own, spraying his own chest and arms. When he finished cumming I was still filling his bowels with my spunk. It soaked my dick and streamed out of his ass on my backstrokes. When I finished I collapsed on his back. I pulled out of him, still stiff.
The other two were in the same position, one on his knees sucking the other. The guy on his knees had his dick out now. He was jacking on it furiously and looked ready to cum.
“Break it up, you too,” I told them. “I said break it up!”
The guy on his knees stopped sucking. He fingered his dick a little, then reluctantly gave that up as well. I got them both over next to me. I put the one who’d been getting sucked on all fours with his pants down to his knees, and started the other one licking his asshole. Then I pulled his pants down too, and got Tim started on his asshole. Even though none of them could hold a candle to the guys I usually fucked, the sight of the three of them getting engaged in such an intensely homoerotic activity was making my mouth practically foam. My dick twitched and shot a couple spurts of pre-cum too. I lined them up, ass cheek to ass cheek, and plunged into the one in the middle. It took a couple thrusts to get some good penetration going. On the first poke I only got the head inside. On the second I made a sidelong scrape against the inside of his ass to loosen it up a bit and made it in about four inches. After that I made it in another inch or so on every thrust. The sweet resistance his ass gave was as delicious as the sight of them on all fours cleaning each other out.
Before I got total penetration, I moved on to his suck buddy. He was so heated from his suck session that he practically fucked me. On the first stroke I was halfway inside. On the second I was home free. Once again enveloped in hot, squirming flesh, it was tempting to ride him out to an orgasm right then, but I had other responsibilities.
Tim grabbed my dick before it got near his asshole and guided it home. He tensed his whole body as I pushed in and shook his head like a horse just out of the corral. After just three or four drives, I pulled out of him and went back to my first fuck. This time I was halfway inside on the first thrust. His ass still resisted my thrusts, but he was starting to push back into me as I fucked him. Inside, he felt like a hot, wet, sucking sponge. Every thrust took my breath away. I was fingering the asses of the guys on either side of him to keep them hot, but the sensations he was creating along my dick were distracting me so much occasionally I lost track of the other two completely with three fingers buried in each of their asses. My big fuzzy balls had drawn up tight to the base of my dick. At the deepest point of my strokes they got between the base of my dick and his asshole, making me bounce off of them, squeezing them. Eventually the sensations were too much to resist. I fired an extra long jet of thick cum deep inside of him on the down stroke, and another on the next. When I opened my eyes between shots I saw his dick was firing off too, without either of us touching it.
Still hypersensitive from cumming inside the first guy, and of course still hard, I plunged deep into the second again. My nipples were rock-hard and pointing straight out about an inch as I fucked him. I leaned over him and rubbed my chest against his back as I fucked. He pushed his back against me and squirmed.
"Stand up and feed me your cock!" I said to the most enthusiastic one, the one who had wielded the gun. I hardly needed to finish the sentence. He straddled the head of the man I was fucking, who was still on all fours, and I inhaled his dick. I coiled my snake tongue around it and pulled as I sucked. He groaned and pawed at my head, but he wasn't strong enough to make any difference in its lunges and retreats. The feelings were too intense for any ordinary man to take for long. In less than a minute he shivered and spurted inside my mouth. Rutting like an animal, I came again too.
I sent two of the assailants on their way, knowing they were headed for a reassessment of their sexuality and their politics once their transformations began. The other one, Tim, I took back to the house with me. At the time I thought it was to prevent him from wielding a gun on someone else before he too changed his views, and because I thought he would make a good household toy. It turned out there were other reasons. Over the coming weeks I became quite fond of him and eventually realized that the germ of the feeling had been inside of me that first day.
The anti-gay violence rose for a while as the epidemic grew, but after a few months those of us who were transformed began to take things into our own hands. We began to patrol gay cruising areas and neighborhoods and to lash out at gay bashers. When physical attacks on homosexuals became too dangerous, the homophobes began to spread terror through the media. They claimed that a new gay elite would take advantage of their strength and terrorize the rest of society. A few men who felt particularly confident of their heterosexuality sought out infection to obtain the strength and size increases, confident that they could resist the homosexual urges. At most they were successful for a few months. Eventually they all failed.
By 1983 a laboratory in France insolated the virus. One researcher estimated that one half of all the gay men in cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles were infected. The early signs of infection that were medically detectable included elevated blood counts and testosterone levels up to 10 times the norm. The infection progressed at different rates in different men. No one knew why that was so, but it was presumed that the rate of progression had something to do with the number of times one was exposed to agent that caused the infection.
With that many men infected, there were enough around so that one could pick up a guy on his transformation night. It became sport among us, like bursting someone’s cherry, to find someone and fuck him during his transformation. Our enhanced perceptions helped us recognize someone close to transformation, but it was never a sure thing. Sometimes you got really lucky, and sometimes you just got lucky.
Tim and I made it a real competition. Tim was one of the recent additions to our household. Tim was a hot cowboy-type from Texas. He grew up on a ranch, so he had the accent and the attitude down. The two of us had become attached to each other. I could relate to his rural background, because I had grown up in Iowa. We also made a formidable cruising pair, him with his cowboy look and me, I had a kind of big, dumb stud farm boy look, with dark blond hair, limp and straight except for a cow lick on my crown that I could never control. We egged each other on in our conquests, and the next morning we compared scores. We both averaged about one transformation experience in ten tricks, but the next day after one of us scored, he ribbed the other one all day, gave him no peace.
Occasionally we really hit the jackpot.
One Saturday night we were at a bar in the Castro. Most of the men that night looked pretty damn good, owing, I suppose, to the effects of a lot of early stage infections. A few of them were the size of Tim and I. Those we ignored, since we assumed they were fully mutated. Other than a friendly word, they tended to ignore us too. The smaller ones, though, were staring at us big ones like crazy. We concentrated on the ones that had the most sex-crazed look in their eyes, because we knew they were the ones most likely to be on the verge of their “big” night.
At the end of the bar stood a gorgeous man we both wanted. He looked like an Asian/African mix. He had a broad, flat nose, full lips and narrow eyes His limbs were long and densely muscled. He had a very narrow waist, which made his broad muscular shoulders seem even wider. He wore a light green tank top. His hair was long and curly, shoulder-length. Both of us got hard-ons just looking at him standing across the bar. The long, straight bulges in our pant legs, thick as baseball bats and just as obvious, drew the attention of the men standing around us.
“I saw him first,” I told Tim.
“His momma saw him before anybody, but that don’t mean she gets to fuck him before I do.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like cowboys. He looks more sophisticated.”
“Oh, and you’re what sophisticated men go for, farm boy?” Tim hoisted his T-shirt, exposing his brick-like abs, and rubbed his stomach as he stared at the guy. The guy winked at him. “ ’Cuse me, darlin’. I gotta go collect my prize.”
It didn’t bother me that Tim introduced himself to the guy before I did. The evening wasn’t over yet. As far as I was concerned the guy was still up for grabs. I decided to give Tim a few minutes alone with him before I intruded, so I hit the men’s room. As I stood in front of the mirror, pissing into the metal trough the bar owners had made into a urinal, a tall, lean man wedged in next to me. He unzipped and started to piss, staring at my dick. I finished and was ready to tuck it back in my pants.
“That’s quite a piece of equipment you’ve got there,” he said. “I bet you haven’t met many men who can do it justice.”
I smiled at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean take the whole thing down their throats.”
“And you can?” I smiled wider. He didn’t know what he was getting into. Soft, it was only twelve inches long.
“’I’ve never failed yet.”
“And if you’re wrong?” I asked.
“I’ll give you the same deal I usually give. If I’m wrong, you can fuck me.”
“What’s so special about that?”
“You’d be the first.”
“You’re on.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and backed into the empty toilet stall, pulling him with me. I sat him on the toilet and I stood facing him. My dick still hung outside my pants, only now it was beginning to get stiff at the thought of sex. He tugged on it. It got firmer and grew an inch toward his face.
His mouth was as narrow as the rest of his frame. I wondered how he’d get the head inside his mouth, but he opened wide and his lips stretched to accommodate. The heat of him made me swell another couple inches into the back of his mouth. Before he had time to start sucking, I reached full mast and forced my way into his gullet. He pulled back a little to inhale and then dove down on it.
On the first dive he got about half of me inside. It felt so good as he pulled his lips and tongue along the length of my cock, I wanted to bury it all inside of him that instant. I wanted to lose the bet. On the second dive he got all but an inch inside, and I decided this was too easy for him. I tightened the muscles at the base of my dick to hold the blood inside. The fresh blood rushing into it made it expand again. It felt like getting an erection all over again. My new friend’s eyes opened wide as it expanded. More of it pushed down his throat as it grew to eighteen inches, nineteen, twenty.
To his credit I buried at least eighteen inches of dick in him before we reached an obstruction inside his throat and I eased up. The longer it had gotten, the thicker it had gotten. It stretched his jaw near the breaking point. His mouth was so tight around my dick, he didn’t need to suck anymore to give me pleasure. All he needed to do -- all he had the energy to do -- was to relax as I fucked his face.
His eyes glazed over. His own dick, easily twelve inches and extraordinarily thick for such a thin man, stuck out of his fly, engorged to the bursting point. Given the size of his dick, it was easy to see where he got his appreciation for large meat, and why he was so motivated to do it justice whenever he encountered it. I milked his dick with my hand and I reached into his pants and pulled out his fat balls. I coated my hand with spit and lubricated it for him. He grabbed the bottom two thirds of it with both his hands while I worked the top third.
His moans vibrated his throat and took me over the edge. I buried as much of my cock down his throat as possible on the first shot, then pulled back and let his tongue and lips work on my super-sensitized cock head and drive me even wilder as I unloaded the rest.
After my spasms subsided, I pulled myself from his throat. My dick was softening, but it still hung down out of my open fly a good fifteen inches. My buddy was jacking his dick frantically now. I pulled his hands away from it and knelt in front of him. It was a snug fit inside the stall. My shoulders rubbed against the walls, and my legs stuck out under the door. I stared at his swollen cock, which was jerking now, then I looked up into his eyes and grinned. Slowly I extended my tongue. When more than three inches of it was out of my mouth, he gasped. The tip of it licked the piss hole of his dick, then slipped about a quarter inch inside and lapped the inside of his cock head. He tried to grab his dick, but I blocked him. He thrust his hips up, trying to push his cock into my face. I pulled my tongue out of his cock, then I slipped more of it out of my mouth and let it snake its way around his dick. I lowered my head as my tongue wound its way lower and lower. When it had reached his root, I had about a third of him inside my mouth. I pulled my head back slightly, tugging gently on his cock with my wet tongue, then I slide slowly forward until all of it was inside me, and my tongue was wrapped around his balls as well.
He was more than big enough to reach my hot spot. My heart was already pounding and my skin was tingling all over. I rocked back and forth with him inside me to rub a few inches of him on it. I clenched my lips around the base of his dick and sucked hard. His hands grabbed the sides of my head, but I was too strong. He couldn’t speed or slow my bobbing head one bit. He squirmed in the grip of my mouth. His arms and legs flailed. Finally, right at the moment I reached orgasm in my throat, he grunted and came down my throat.
When I stood up to tuck my dick back in my pants, my friend was collapsed against the toilet tank, limp.
“You’re not even human,” he said to me.
“And I’m not through with you yet. I intend to collect on our wager, but my buddy is waiting for me at the bar. Get dressed and follow me.”
I’d been away long enough for Tim to have talked his way completely into the pants of our longhaired beauty. When we walked up it looked like they were about ready to set their drinks down and head for the door. Nevertheless I introduced myself to the guy, whose name was Enrico, who it turns out is a model, although he paid the bills as a personal trainer. Of course I stumbled over the name of my new companion, because that was one thing we hadn’t exchanged. When he introduced himself, I found out his name was Walter.
“We were just on our way out,” Enrico told me, his eyes devouring my chest as he spoke. “We’re headed back to my place for a nightcap. Would you too like to join us?”
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have intruded on Tim’s situation, but after his bravado earlier, inserting myself into his fuck seemed like good clean fun to me, so I accepted for both Walter and myself. My back was turned to Tim, but I could imagine the disgust on his face. Outside the bar, it worked out that Tim and Enrico had the only two cars, so they couldn’t ride together. Tim tried to give me his car keys, but I volunteered to ride with Enrico, and Enrico politely accepted.
Enrico had one of those big old sixties sedans with wide front bench seats. After he had pulled out into traffic, I slide over next to him and slipped my left hand into his pants while I fondled his leg. Just the touch of my hands was enough to make him groan. I figured he was pretty far along in his transformation if he could feel that horny. Whoever took him tonight would definitely get a wild ride, and I wasn’t ready to concede that it would be Tim.
I wrapped by left hand around his big balls and squeezed, as I undid his pants with my right. His substantial equipment flopped out right there in my hands, firm and anxious to go. His dick was already over a foot long, and his balls were the size of lemons. Like the rest of him, his cock was beautifully shaped and proportioned. It looked good enough to eat. So I did. In one lunge I drew the whole length of it down my throat and massaged it with my throat muscles. The way it excited the hot spot in my throat took my breath away for a few seconds, but I recovered. I slid my tongue around his cock starting at the corona and kept wrapping it around until it was beyond the base and wrapped under his scrotum, tugging at his balls.
Enrico’s breathing was so erratic by then, I could only imagine what his driving was like. He was beginning to thicken and get even firmer, so I yanked open the top of my 501s to grab hold of my dick so I could jack myself while he was cumming. He caught sight of it as I gripped it and gasped. Just then he went stiff as a board and started pouring cum into my throat like a geyser. His intense excitement and a couple of full-length wanks on my piece were all it took to get me to shoot too. He jammed his hand down on my neck, urging me to keep him deep inside my throat, and lifted his hips off the seat, grinding the coarse hairs of his groin hard into my mouth. When I came up for air we were parked in the short driveway in front of his flat. Tim’s car was on the street behind us, paused just long enough to make sure it was us before he drove off to find parking.
Enrico lived in the bottom flat of a two flat house at the top of Potrero Hill. He led me up the short flight of stairs from the driveway inside and left the door to the flat ajar for Tim and Walter. I stopped him, slid my hands down the back of his still loosened pants, fondled his ass and kissed him in the darkened entryway. Naturally he was hard again, and I was too. But when the door started to open, Enrico broke off our passionate kiss and zipped himself up before Tim could catch us. I had hoped to take him away from Tim, but he obviously felt some sort of loyalty to him, or maybe he just dug him more than he dug me. I was just the hors d'oeuvre, even though it had been me who had done the eating.
Tim engulfed Enrico in his arms and they locked lips for longer than I cared to stand there counting seconds. When Enrico pulled away he suggested we all climb into the hot tub in his backyard. I wholeheartedly agreed, eager to get Enrico into more of a group encounter situation.
It was a typical chill San Francisco summer evening. There was a sturdy breeze through the postage stamp backyard that rustled the leaves of the tree next to the hot tub. We discarded our clothes at the water’s edge. Everyone’s dick was already hard. I sat next to Enrico, but before I could lay a hand on him, Tim started sucking on his prick, which stood straight up out of the water a good five inches, like a fleshy periscope. Tim wasted no time. In an instant his head was under water and he had his lips around the root of Enrico’s dick. Enrico’s massive arms were draped along the edge of the tub. Laid out flat against the tub’s edge, his shoulders were even more enormous, almost as big as his head, which was thrown back, his damp, long hair pinned behind it. He twisted his torso as Tim sucked, corkscrewing his dick inside Tim’s throat. He groaned through an open-mouthed smile. Tim’s giant back arched above the water line like the hump of a sea serpent. All the rest of him was under the water, working Enrico over. Dick and I could both hold our breath indefinitely – a side effect of the virus’ changes to our bodies. It was how the virus helped us take huge cocks down our throat.
Watching Dick take Enrico was making me begin to salivate. I reached over to Walter without taking my eyes off them and pulled him toward me. He was so mesmerized by the sight of them, I don’t think he noticed I hadn’t been paying attention to him. I sat him down on my lap with my prick between his legs, rubbing under his large balls and the underside of his own large dick. Both of them stuck almost a foot above the water. I tugged at his nipples and licked his back, but we didn’t really need any foreplay. We were both already over excited. I drew his knees up to this chest, lifted him out of the water by the ass and positioned his asshole at the tip of my prick. Walter’s asshole was so virgin, so tight, that even the weight of his whole body pressing down on my dick head wasn’t enough to force it inside. He squirmed a little. I held him firmly and pulled him down harder as I forced upwards. It was like trying to fuck a brick wall! I pulled him down and drove harder. He opened up and the head of my dick slide inside, but his sphincter locked almost painfully tight around the underside of my cock head. Still, with the end of my dick inside his hot ass, all I wanted was to get in deeper. Walter began to struggle. He was suspended in air, way above the water, partially impaled on my dick.
“Relax,” I said in a deep calm voice, “I promise you you’re going to love this.”
I stroked his chest gently with one hand and rubbed the length of his dick with the other. He began to relax. His weight began to drag him down along my cock a little. I drove upwards again. I got almost half way in. I lifted him up a little and pushed back in, just a little deeper.
Walter moaned. I could tell he was starting to get off on the sensation of being stuffed full of giant cock. I held his legs tight to his chest and twisted him around to face me, at the same time cork screwing my cock deeper inside him. His eyes were shut tight and his mouth was wide open. I was starting to lose myself in the fuck too. His still super-tight sphincter was passing over the last few inches of my dick, down towards the base where it widened. When I got completely inside him, I felt ectastic. Both of us were content to stay still and enjoy the sensations, until, after a few minutes of stillness, Walter’s dick started squirting spontaneously, great globs of thick milky cum.
As the cum poured out of him, I started fucking him again, in full, deep strokes. With each stroke I lifted us further out of the hot tub, until I was standing up, cradling Walter, who was completely outside the water, by the ass. Still inside him, I walked up the steps and laid him on his back in the grass, his legs over my shoulders, and started fucking him in earnest. It wasn’t long before his ass squeezed the first load from my dick.
Walter began to get hard again as he felt my cum squirt against his insides. He rubbed his hands over my balloon-like pecs, then steadied himself with his hands on my biceps. Even his large hands barely covered the front of my arms. Every stroke of my dick into his ass drew another squirt of cum from my prick. No matter how many times I squirted I didn’t seem able to stop. Not that I was anxious to stop! I was enjoying myself so much I realized I had forgotten all about Tim and Enrico! This skinny little guy had to have the best ass on the planet! And he’d been keeping it hidden far too long! Tim was still deep-throating Enrico’s log, but Enrico was watching us with his eyes wide open. He gripped Enrico’s head with his hand like a basketball and vigorously pumped his head up and down. My entire body tingled as I poured more and more cum into Walter’s ass. I felt Walter’s hands all over my chest, arms and shoulders. Sweat flew off my damp hair as I shook my head and clenched my teeth.
Suddenly Enrico bucked his groin up out of the water, with a loud moan, taking Tim up with it, his lips wrapped tightly around Enrico’s dick. As he surfaced suddenly, Tim looked like a sea monster. His enormously broad back was almost a big as a whale’s. Tim’s Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed huge gulps of Enrico’s cum and continued to tug his lips and tongue along the length of his dick. Tim’s dick was erupting too, without even being touched.
Noisebridge's sewing guild hosts sewing events and maintains three industrial sewing machines, a variety of domestic sewing machines, and knitting machines.
Open Project Night, an unstructured event in which participants brought their own projects for repair and alterations help, advice on techniques, materials, and machines, starting a new project with materials at the space, and just having fun sewing with fellow makers
Sew With Knits, in which we went over how to operate the industrial serger, how to operate the domestic coverstitch, overview of domestic sewing machine stitch types appropriate for stretch knit material, and advice on participants' projects
We have home machines and industrial machines, and the home machines are all, to varying degrees, much more breakable. They're consumer products, often designed and built with a modern “what is this ‘repair’ of which you speak?” mindset, not built to withstand abuse or rough handling.
To that end, here are some strong guidelines for how to Be Excellent and use the home sewing machines in ways that don't break them:
First, always be gentle. Treat the machine like a puppy. It will bite you, die, or incur a huge bill if you damage it.
Do not pull fabric through the machine. Let the feed dogs do the work, or drop them if you want to free-sew or embroider. Pulling work through the machine is a good way to bend or break the needle, damage the bobbin and/or bobbin case and/or shuttle, pull the shuttle out of phase, or otherwise damage something. You're lucky if it's the needle or bobbin; those are replaceable. Anything else takes the machine out of commission.
If fabric isn't feeding properly, you may need to adjust the presser foot pressure. See point #4.
Always turn the handwheel the correct direction On most of our machines, this is towards you. If you can't remember, press lightly on the pedal and you'll be able to feel which way the handwheel wants to turn. Turning the handwheel the wrong way won't necessarily break the machine, but it can mess up your stitch, break your thread, or cause a snarl that can break the needle.
Change the machine's configuration as you need, but put it back when you're done. Every machine should have a standard presser foot and a “universal” needle (size 90/14) loaded when not in use. It should be on the default settings for presser foot pressure and tension. Anyone who needs something different should make whatever changes they need, and change them back before they put the machine away/leave.
Put the machine away when you're done/before leaving. The cutting table is not a machine storage rack.
Keep the machine's parts with the machine. Some machines have a storage compartment on the front of the bed (the bottom portion of the machine where the bobbin is). The domestic machines have a kit for holding bobbins, feet, needles, spool caps, screwdrivers, and anything else necessary to using the machine. The pedal should be kept with the machine at all times, and should have a paper tag tied to it identifying which machine it belongs to. (Such tags are kept in a drawer in the sewing area.)
Use the correct needle, and change the needle when needed. Always check which needle is loaded into the machine before you start sewing—make sure it's right for the type (woven vs. knit vs. solid) of fabric, the tightness of weave/knit, and the weight of the fabric.
Non-woven materials such as leather or vinyl require special “leather” needles, made to pierce solid objects. Knitted fabrics, including T-shirt fabric, require “ball point” needles, which are less likely to pierce/cut a yarn. Tight weaves such as microsuede may require “microtex” or “sharp” needles that can find their way between the yarns. Denim and heavy canvas may require “denim” (a.k.a. “jeans”) needles. Most normal woven fabrics will work with a “universal” needle.
If you're using the right kind of needle but it isn't going through/is skipping stitches or is stitching irregularly or with difficulty, try a heavier diameter or (if woven) a denim needle. Most likely the needle is not able to cleanly penetrate the fabric. Continuing to sew in this state is a good way to permanently bend (i.e., ruin) or break the needle.
Needles wear out! They are a consumable. If you're pretty sure you have the right kind and diameter of needle, change it out for another like one. If that works better, safely dispose of the worn needle—don't put it back for some other sucker to try.
Avoid computerized machines unless you really need them. Computerized machines are much more delicate than mechanical machines. The best reason to use a computerized machine is it's the one with embroidery features and you need that. Otherwise, take a mechanical one such as the Kenmore 385 if it's available—they hold up better.
Use the correct type of bobbin for the machine you're using. Bobbins come in a variety of types, including Class 15, Class 15J, Class 66, and numerous oddballs. This page lists the correct type of bobbin for each machine, and the same information should soon be stickered onto all of our machines. Any machine, otherwise working, may fail to sew correctly (skipped stitches, shuttle snarls, etc.) with the wrong kind of bobbin in it.
Do not use a damaged or broken bobbin. If it's cracked, chipped, or bent, don't use it. Transfer the thread (if any) to a new bobbin of the same type (or of the type for the machine you're going to use), then chuck the busted bobbin in the trash.
Please reach out to a maintainer. We're looking to simplify our fleet. At the very least, this will mean getting rid of home machines that don't meet certain criteria (Class 15 bobbins, drop-in bobbin case, works, etc.). We may go further than that and standardize on one model, but that's TBD.
The Community Thrift Store on Valencia would also probably love to have it.
Please DO NOT unthread the sewing machines unless you must. (e.g. to remove a spool of thread, simply cut it close to the spool so that the next person can simply tie a knot with the next thread and pull it all the way through to the needle). This is most important for the serger.
Domestic and industrial machines use different needles, bobbins, and feet, so check to make sure you are using the right kind. The industrial machines each have a kit hanging on the pegboard behind them. Domestic machine supplies are either in a kit on the table, or are located in labeled drawers on the white cabinet (PLEASE KEEP IT ORGANIZED).
The closest place to get domestic machine parts and supplies is Fabric Outlet on Mission between 17th & 18th st. Industrial machine parts are only available by mail order (if you know anyone local please let us know)
Needles may differ between machines and come in sizes (10, 11, 12, 14, 16, etc.). The higher numbers are heavier gauge needles suitable for thicker fabrics.
Needles also come in different types, including (this is an abridged list; look to other sites for more complete lists):
Jersey: Has a ball point, for knitted fabrics (including T-shirt fabric).
“Universal”: Moderately sharp, for most woven fabrics. Denim needles are the same but more rigid, for tighter weaves of thick yarns (like denim or canvas).
Microtex needles are the sharpest, for tight weaves of thin yarns, like microsuede or nylon.
Leather needles have a tiny blade at the tip, for cutting holes in leather and vinyl. Don't use a leather needle for woven or knitted fabrics: The blade will cut the threads rather than squeezing between them, leaving holes that may start rips.
Needles for the industrial straight stitch and walking foot machines must be inserted with the scarf facing right. Please check the respective manuals.
If you've never operated a sewing machine before please attend a Sewing 101, which happens every 2nd friday, before you use our machines on your own. The class fills up and has a waitlist, so we ask that you only come if you've secured a spot on Meetup. Sewing machines are delicate creatures and we want to minimize the amount of breakage.
Read the manual! You'll probably learn something even if you've been sewing for a long time.
Printed manuals for each industrial machine are in the gray binder on the bookshelf. We don't have manuals printed for all the domestics, but a Google search should bring them up.
Use scraps for testing to determine thread tension and sewing speed.
To wind a bobbin, place the empty bobbin on the horizontal spindle to the right of the machine body (near the hand wheel). Run a second thread through the upper holder, down to the tensioner at the back of the right side of the machine, in line with the spindle. Thread the end through one of the holes in the bobbin side, from the inside to the outside. Press the lever to push the spindle down in contact with the sewing machine belt. While holding the thread end so it doesn't just whip out of the bobbin, press the pedal to run a couple of inches (if there were fabric in the machine). Soon enough you can let go of the thread end as it will have been caught by windings on top of it. If you are doing a lot of sewing, you can start a new bobbin before the current one is empty, and let it wind up as you sew. When the bobbin is full, the lever will automatically snap out away from the belt and stop winding thread.
The bobbin winder is usually on the top of the machine near the right corner (right being the side with the handwheel). It should look like a short spindle that can't be removed and sticks up about half an inch (the thickness of a bobbin) from a flat round surface.
Place a bobbin on the spindle, then:
On some machines, the handwheel can be pulled out to switch from sewing to bobbin-winding. (Push it back in when you're done winding bobbins.)
On the big Singer machine, the handwheel has a part that flips up to engage the bobbin-winder.
On the Brother machines, the bobbin spindle can be slid between the left (sewing) and right (winding). In the latter position, a brake slightly intersects the bobbin and will stop it from getting over-wound.
Once the machine is in winding mode and is powered on, press the pedal slightly and make sure thread is going onto the bobbin properly. Once it's winding properly, floor the pedal until the bobbin is fully wound (some machines will stop the bobbin automatically; others may require you to pay attention).
Remember to switch the machine back to sewing mode when you're done winding bobbins!!!
If a sewing machine is actually broken and non functional, as opposed to just you can't figure out how to make it work, please call Billy from Apparel City at 415-816-8645 (mobile) and schedule an appointment for him to come fix it.
He usually charges around $80 per hour, plus parts.
Email the list and people will chip in to cover this. If you can't manage this process, email the sewing list and find someone else who can. Also, please put a note on the machine so people know what is going on with it.
The sewing station includes a variety of scissors, including straight scissors/shears, a pair of pinking shears, and a couple other specialty scissors.
DO NOT USE FABRIC SCISSORS FOR ANYTHING THAT ISN'T FABRIC. Paper and other non-fabric things will rapidly dull blades to the point where we need to sharpen them again to use them on fabric.
There are some “paper only” (i.e., pre-ruined) scissors on the tools wall since we know people will look in the sewing section for scissors. There are also some “fabric only” (i.e., not yet ruined) scissors that should only ever be used for fabric.
Also related: There is a sharpening stone on the tools wall in the sewing station.
Thread snips are the small scissor-like tools used for cutting the thread sticking out of a work so you can remove the work from the machine.
Thread snips shouldn't be used to cut fabric—use the fabric shears (scissors) or rotary cutters for that. Neither should they be used on non-fabric things like paper or tape.
There are three pairs of thread snips hanging from the tools wall in the sewing section.
These look similar to pizza cutters but are NOT FOR FOOD USE (both because it trashes the blade and because the blades are not food-safe: new blades are coated in machine oil).
All of our rotary cutters are 45mm, except for one, which is 60mm but has no blade. It's unclear whether we'll keep that one, since we would need to keep 60mm blades in stock and that would mean figuring out where to keep them and what to use them for.
Each rotary cutter has a cutting (blade extended) position and a safe (blade retracted) position. The Olfa ergonomic cutters will also spring back to retracted automatically, and can't be extended unless the safety button is pushed to the unlocked side.
Rotary cutters should be used on a cutting mat such as the one on the main sewing station table. Usually you want a straight cut, so you should use an acrylic ruler to guide the blade.
Rotary cutters are EXTREMELY sharp, so be careful. Please keep the cutter blade-side-up so it's less likely to come into accidental contact with the table or anything on it—if you can see the blade, you can avoid contact with it.
Rotary cutters are mostly pretty foolproof. As long as you don't cut yourself, your ruler, wood, another rotary cutter, a 1973 Oldsmobile, or anything else that isn't fabric, the blade should enjoy a good, long life.
But, every blade wears down eventually. Blade sharpeners exist, but we don't currently have one, and a sharpener can't save a chipped or bent blade.
If a blade can't be sharpened, there are new 45mm blades in the storage drawers along the wall.
Different rotary cutters have different parts, but they all have these four, in this order:
Hub/screw
Rotary cutter body
Blade
Nut
You should try to keep all of the parts (including those not listed—some cutters do have some bonus parts) in the correct order. If you get the order wrong, the blade might not spin freely or it might be too far from the cutter body. If that's the case, no biggie, just disassemble and try again.
No tools are needed.
Remove the nut by hand, keeping your thumb on the hub/screw on the other side.
Gently turn the cutter over and let the blade fall out onto your fingers, and any other parts onto the table.
Sharpen or replace the blade.
Put the blade onto the screw.
Put the screw (with blade) into the cutter, and put all of the other parts, ending with the nut, onto the other side.
Some of the parts (especially pedals and/or cords) for the sewing machines have, shall we say, installed a walking foot. Here's what we're currently missing:
Status: Location unknown as of 2023-04-20
130-Stitch Computerized Sewing and Quilting (Brother XR1355) Works as of 2021-12-28
This machine is on the home sewing machine table (Table 3).
Overview This machine does 130 different stitches including lots of cool decorative flowers and patterns. Bobbin: Clear plastic, class 15 (Brother SA156). Please use bobbins in Table 3 toolbox.
Status: Broken as of 2023/02. Ready for discard
Type: Domestic serger
Year: probably 1990s
Notes:dropped when being carried by handle. On/off switch broken, possible replacement part found, just needs to be wired on. side plastic casing broken, could possibly be repaired with plastic molding material. Part not necessary to functioning, but nice to have to protect machine from dust
This is a four-thread overlock machine. It's evidently meant for knitted fabrics, as a silkscreened note on the upper-left of the front of the machine notes that it requires a Singer 2045 needle, which is a ball point.
The thread guides above the machine are on a pole that telescopes out. Make sure to raise it before using the machine; it works better that way.
currently missing as of 2021-07-14
This machine is awesome, and can do many different stitches as well as CNC embroidery.
It's usually stored on the wall of the sewing area. It looks like a home sewing machine but is as expensive as an industrial one and is many people's favorite machine.
Location unknown as of 2021-7-14
This machine has a bobbin case, so it requires a little bit more knowledge to change out the bobbin than newer machines that have a top drop-in bobbin.
Bobbin: Special metal bobbins. There's a parts drawer specifically for Pfaff bobbins.
Broken as of 2019-11-04: Shuttle pops up out of bobbin race, resulting in failure to make stitches and internal pressure upon the bobbin race door.
Has a top drop-in bobbin. Likely to become our workhorse, as the Heavy Duty is a sturdy mechanical machine.
Has a one-step buttonhole feature with a plastic buttonhole foot. Tricky to use but handy if you know how.
A knob on the top of the machine, near the slot where the take-up lever pops up, enables adjusting the presser foot pressure. Like top thread tension, this should generally not be messed with and should be put back after a job that does require adjusting it, but changing the presser foot pressure makes sense in certain circumstances:
For thick works such as three or more layers of denim (e.g., when hemming denim garments), reduce the presser foot pressure in order to be able to drive over the inseam and outseam.
For light works made of thin or sheer fabrics, or slippery fabrics, you may need to increase the pressure to ensure the feed dogs can properly feed (all layers of) the work.
Always put the presser foot pressure back how it was when you're done!!! Setting up future machine-users for difficulty/failure is un-excellent.
In November 2020 we received a generous donation of two Automatic Snap Machines worth over $4000 from Craig Spring http://www.brotus.com !
One pair (one female, one male) of fully automatic, electric powered, 20 line, snap setting machines. These are older model machines manufactured by the Ho Hung Ming company in Taiwan (https://www.hohm.com).
They have a US location at: Ho Hung Ming USA Enterprise, 13525 Alma Ave, Gardena, CA 90249, Phone: 3103274847.
One of the advantages of these older machines is that they are simple mechanical machines built to last. Like an old car, they are easier to repair than newer ones. In 22 years, he never needed to repair these machines. They still run like a beast.
As there exists no manual for these machines, Craig and DK gave a servicing and use demonstration on Nov 15, 2020 via Jitsi and X uploaded it to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2ozToy38Q
