Bimini Boot

I probably should have practiced somehow with various sewing techniques prior to jumping in, but I wouldn’t know where to start and have never liked throw away items.  I needed a bimini boot or cover for my bimini top which I had lost in Florida.  Now, I knew where to start with that project.  Sailrite offers many kits and videos for creating boat items.  I ordered the kit from them.  The video is fairly good and provides most of the tips needed to create the “pattern” on the fabric and then cut it out.  I have one suggestion for the person, like myself, that hasn’t done this before.  Get some craft paper, the size of the fabric sent by Sailrite and cut everything out there.  I traced out the items as described on the video directly on the fabric.  After doing so I realized that I had a great deal of waste; which I adjusted for prior to cutting out the pieces.

The way I cut out the fabric left much of it on the roll.  For the cost of this project I think I will get a companionway cover and a few other items out of the way.  But back to the bimini boot.  The hardest part of the bimini boot is the curves.  The video discusses making cuts in the fabric around the arc of the curve.  But it doesn’t discuss how large they should be; even if they are just as long as the “hem” is wide, that would be nice to know.  Turns out that it lays down best if is just the length or a millimeter shorter then the hem.  Even after that knowledge sewing the first few times around a curve is not an easy process.  The Sailrite presser foot does such an excellent job of pulling the material through the sewing machine if you are not careful it will get away from you and sew parts you hadn’t intended to.

There were a few mistakes that I made.  First, I attempted to thread the machine with the foot in the down position.  This will cause the thread to not have enough tension.  The first stitched seam looked great on one side, but the other had small loops.  I had to lay it down again with proper tension.  The next mistake was on sewing the zipper in.  I separate the zipper and sewed the pieces in.  Unfortunately, I sewed one side in the wrong way and had to rip it out to do again.  True both are minor and easy to fix, but experience would likely have prevented it and will do so in the future.

Another project from Scraps

From the scraps of the bimini boot I almost had enough to create a one piece tiller cover like the old tired one on my boat.  I took the tattered one off and ripped out the stitching.  I then ironed the folds flat to get the true size of the tiller cover.  Once flat it was readily apparent that I did not have a piece big enough; really wide enough since the length was fine.  I did have two pieces the same size however, that I could stitch together.  Since I did not want it to look like Frankenstein’s monster, with bad stitching all over, I had to devise a way to get the pieces together in a way that it looked somewhat professional.  Making a pattern was the only way.  So I measured the length and then at 3 places the circumference of the tiller.  I added to this half an inch for each seam on all sides to be sewn.  The three measurements around the tiller, when drawn out showed the taper necessary.  Then it was just a matter of sewing three sides and turning the cover right side out.  The new tiller cover looks great and I can see that each time I use the machine I am getting a little better.

I’ll add a few pictures soon of the finished boot and the tiller cover.