sewing on neoprene (?sp)

Help us help you, Nancy. I'm not sure what neoprene is. We've stitched on just about everything here - and I once saw a Pfaff dealer prove that you can sew beer cans together with a Pfaff. I don't know if neoprene is flag fabric - or clear plastic or what. Polly

Polly, think wet suit!

Polly, Neoprene is commomly used to make wetsuits ( and pencil cases and stubbie/can holders). I don't know it that is what they are called in the US, but like surfers wear, a soft rubber.

Dee in Oz

Hi Nancy, Is that the stuff wetsuits are made off - if so, I think an industrial machine would be needed. When my OH and I were scuba divers over 40 years ago, we used to glue our shoes and repairs because I could never sew on my machine, which, by the way is still going strong today.

Spelling is fine. Desire to sew neoprene requires the ? :)

As mentioned by DiMa, I'm pretty sure that requires an industrial machine; modern home machines aren't designed for anything near that.

Barring an industrial, though, if you can find a late 40's, early 50's heavy duty Singer, fair chance it will do the trick if any home machine will.

--pig

I would try to get a hold of an older machine. I have a Brother from the

70's that will sew through that, leather and many other th> Has any successfully stitched neoprene on a home sewing machine with any

I know it can be done, my seatcovers in my Element are made of neoprene. May I suggest that you call your sewing machine dealer. If anyone would know it would be the dealer. Bonnie NJ

Several years ago I made cup cuffs, scissor sleeves and eyeglass cases out of some neoprene scraps I was given. My D1 and serger where a frustrating disaster. I didn't try using the 1950 Singer. My trusty old Husqvarna 6440 sewed it beautifully. Here's a few of the things I remember doing after much trial and error to make things go together.

Use that double sided basting tape to hold things together, you can't really pin it. I tried clothes pins and bulldog clips but didn't work very well and were hard to sew around. Make sure you use wash away BASTING tape and not the craft tape, the packages look very similar and craft tape will really gum up the needle.

I found that a top stitch, microtex or leather needle worked best. Ball point needles tend to bog things down, puncture instead of pierce, and do wonky stitching.

Loosen up the tension. You'll just have to fiddle with this until you get it right. I can't remember if I had to fiddle with both top and bottom tension or not. Dropping feed dogs didn't work well for me.

Lengthen the stitches. If you get them too close together it will perforate and tear or shred.

I used top stitching thread and the heavier rayon embroidery threads. If the thread is too fine it can shred or eventually cut the neoprene or just snap while you're sewing.

I found strips of light weight tear away stabilizer placed top and bottom before sewing the seam also helped to make things go smoother in the machine. I'm a peddle to the metal, hammer down, bat of Hell. full speed ahead sewist and I had to S-L-O-W down. As long as I kept a nice, steady ka-pock-ka-ta, ka-pock-ka-ta rhythm things went together pretty well.

If I remember anything else I'll post again. Good luck.

Learn from the mistakes of others, you'll never live long enough to make them all yourself. ;) Val

I was just thinking that one of those hot shot sewing machine salesmen would be the guy to challenge on this stuff. They just love to show how well a machine works on that stiff fabric nobody ever uses. Might as well really put them to the test! Taria

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I will try these ideas. I had thought of trying tear away stabilizer to see if that worked at all.

Nancy

My experiences with it match Penny's above... I found that for straight stitch (I was using a Singer 15), I needed a LONG stitch, perhaps 5 spi, and it helped to have freezer paper above and below the fabric to help prevent flagging (where the needle causes the fabric to hop up and down like a trampoline). Slow stitching helped, too, iirc.

Kay

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Nancy, I had to sew reinforcement stitches on a doggy life jacket made of the stuff. I used a jeans needle and heavy thread and it worked for me.

I don't know what to tell you other than what you've done. Guess I'm not much help.

Cindy

Thanks for the suggestions Cindy. I didn't have a jeans needle, but I did have 100 and 90 top stitch and they didn't work. I tried heavy thread, nylon thread, regular 50 weight sewing thread, none of which I could get to make work. Nancy