I am a seamstress of average skill who's sewing their first gambeson for a friend. We are using the Period Pattern #101 and are custom tailoring and altering the pattern to his specifications. This will be sewn in muslin, with cotton stuffing and cotton thread for use as a practice gambeson.

I know that this will shock and dismay some of you but I am making it on a New Home Memory Craft 8000 sewing machine. I have made a "swatch" and stuffed it with 1" cotton piping to help account for the shrinkage that will occur. I am having a difficult time sewing the ends down so that the cotton doesn't slide to the bottom of the garment. Obviously this will create a problem when it's time to sew the seams together as well.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make this work in my machine?

Thank you

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I don't know why it would shock and dismay us, as although many board members have handsewn clothes, many of us equally have clothes with machine stitching on hidden seams. I think most of us have used modern equipment at some point to make replicas of Medieval artifacts. Usually using the original equipment makes for a better copy of an original.

I think the problem you have is that the type of garment you are trying to make is a padded armour, and I think that your machine just isn't going to be able to handle the garment (assuming you are trying to replicate such an armour as closely as you can) as it progresses. Sewing through the many layers of cloth and tow, or raw cotton stuffing is going to burn out your machine. I don't know of any close replicas (in spirit anyhow, of the correct thickness) that have the quilting hand sewn, as it is just too much for a machine to handle - even when the edges of such a garment may be machine sewn, the stitching through the body invariably ends up handsewn, unless you have access to something like they use commercially for sewing parachutes, webbing, and heavy tents and the like.

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As for quilting, the problem as I see it is this: hand-quilting takes a long time and is physically laborious. (You WILL build muscles in your hand that you didn't know you had.) I cannot charge a customer the true cost without getting bug-eyed stares. Therefore, I unrepentantly machine-quilt. I don't see a workable solution to this particular conundrum, aside from doing the work for $1 an hour or something. Now -- if someone wants to pay me fair money to hand-quilt, no problem! I'd be delighted to take the job. (But, as I tell people, my specialty is tailoring and historical patterning. If they want a great fit that will give the historical silhouette and seam lines, that's what they're paying me for, above all.)

If you are looking for a machine that will do the job, there are a bunch of brands that are all essentially the same machine, made in Taiwan, going for prices from $200 to $500 that will meet your needs. They go by names like "AlphaSew", "Morse", "ConSew", "TuffSew", "Family Sew", "Reliable", "Sailrite", "Camper's Tentmaker", etc. You can find them on eBay by doing a search on "walking foot sewing machines". They are not "true" industrial machines, like those made by Juki and going for a lot more money -- but for the home sewer of heavy stuff, they should be more than adequate.

Any recommendations on thread strength? I'm using cotton but would quilters cotton thread be stronger?

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These are just from a search on "linen thread." I have never bought from them before.