Gypsyjane127

Thanks, Tejas! You may have saved me from a very bad investment.

LOL! We have a small pontoon so I don't have to worry about sailing. I may need to work on the Bimini cover at some point though. Thanks for your advice.

I saw a TuffSew on ebay and looked at their website. It's not a name I'm familiar with but it "looked" good to my semi educated eyes. I might be stretching it at 5/8". I do Iike a high lifting foot so I don't have to stuff the bag under causing fabric shifting. I talked to a sail rite dealer in MD a few yards ago and he told me that only a sail rite dealer can work on the machine. My local machine mechanic told me that same thing yesterday.

Thank you! I can get by with just a flat bed. I'm used to the two I currently have. As for thickness, I would say 3/8-5/8" would be the max thickness. The bag in my avatar was made with cork, two layers of cotton fabric, two layers of mid weight interfacing, and two layers of thermolam plus. I cut the fleece away from the seams but my current machine had a very hard time going through all those layers. In fairness, I didn't buy her to use on so many layers. Does this help?

Hello all. This is my first post here but I've been doing a lot of reading. The information here is wonderful! I'm hoping you can help me. I've been sewing bags for quite a few years now and I recently started adding vinyl, faux leather, and soft leather to my bags. Unfortunately, my current machine has trouble through the multiple layers of fabric, fleece, and leather especially in the seam areas. So, I'm in the market for a walking foot machine. The problem is that I cannot have an industrial set up in my apartment but I can have a semi industrial or portable walking foot machine. I see a lot of these types of machines on ebay but since I'm an absolute newbie to walking foot machines I'm afraid I'll make a bad decision and end up with somthing that doesn't meet my needs. Any advice in choosing? I do need something that sews a beautiful topstitch and can go through layers of vinyl bag handles. Recommendations? Thanks for your help!