Trick for sewing felt to a slippery surface

[Snakeoil]

Now, I'm a newbie so many of you may roll your eyes when you read this because it's common knowledge. But it sure wasn't for me.

I made a case for a zoom eyepiece  that goes to a Kowa spotting scope. Very expensive piece of equipment. I was making adapters to use a webcam on the scope and needed both eyepieces to fit the adapters. It's my shooting partner's scope and he gives me the zoom eyepiece in this POS old cardboard box with tape around it and no flap on one end. There was no way I could give that back to him in that crummy box. So, I decided to make the case.

Used a 2" shipping tube. Lined it with red felt. Turned cedar end plug and cedar cap plug, both with foam pads and gave the cardboard tube a couple coats of acrylic poly. Came out decent. The trick came out of frustration.

I wanted to sew the felt to the inside of the tube rather than glue it. Sewed up a felt tube, inserted it into the cardboard tube and then stitched it on my 29K70. When I was done, to my dismay, the felt was only tacked in one spot and the rest was all bunched up and shoved down the tube. Ripped all the stiches out and tried again, trying to see if all was going well. I thought it was but was wrong. Nice thing about the Singer is it will track the first set of needle holes perfectly. Ripped out the stitches again and thought about it. Then I had an extra synapse fire and got an idea.

Took a sheet of paper and rolled it up to fit inside the tube. Cut it so it was only one layer when expanded into the tube. Stuck that in the tube and now the felt was between the paper and the inside of the cardboard tube. Stitched it for the 3rd time and success. The paper served as a glide material that would not catch on the arm of the machine. Once done, just had to rip out the paper. Will keep this trick in mind for future projects involving felt or other material that tends to catch easily on things.

Here's the case. Nothing fancy. But wanted to show how I stitched the felt to the cardboard. The foot tore up the cardboard a bit. If I wanted this to look pretty, I would have covered it in vinyl. But it's purely utilitarian.

I love this machine.