Tubes

So I finally cleaned up and pulled apart the old mountain bike tube I had draped over a chair on my front porch for weeeeeeks.  It was covered in pollen on the outside, and coated in baby powder on the INside.  A quick call to the man informed me that the powder prevents the tube from sticking to the tire when it heats up!  I had no idea.

This was my first attempt at sewing a zipper onto anything.  I had to wing it because the "easy" instructions found on the zipper package were ridiculous.  I took a bunch of pictures of this process, but had to can them all because I initially sewed the zipper on the wrong, stinking side. 

 

Oh, AND it took a full hour and a half of tinkering to find the correct tension to stitch length ratio for sewing through two layers of rubber...fruuuustratinnnnng!  But around 11pm two nights ago, a proper pouch finally emerged.

 

And as a side note, the outside of the tube (UNpowdered) is pretty sticky and will not run through the machine on its own because it sticks to the bottom of the presser foot.  I had to lay pieces of newspaper over it which not only obscured seam vision, but also gets sewed INTO the seam and has to be pulled out later.  With tweezers.  There has to be a better way?

The pouch was supposed to be a manly sewing kit for Jerm, but this one is way too long (stupid 9" zipper).  Alternatively, my boss said it would make a perfect pencil bag, and I think he's right.

Still though, I wanted to make right by the sewing kit idea, so I made another one last night, using a 7" zipper instead.  This time I knew to close the ends on the zipper which made it a lot more tidy.  

 

Voila!  The shorter one is way more what I had in mind, and at first I was disappointed that the lines of stitching along the zippers are pretty uneven...but then I decided I liked the idea because they run along the natural curve of the tube and that seems more hand crafty to me. 

 

That's it!