Dust Covers

We're making dust covers for the machines in the plastics area. Here's what we learned, so that future dust covers can follow the same pattern and construction procedure.

Supplies:

• The machine to be covered
• A measuring device
• Fabric
• Thread, needles, sewing machine
• A zipper approximately the height of the machine to be covered

Skills:

• Sewing a straight seam - for basic construction
• Flat-felling a seam allowance - so that the seam allowances don't catch on bits of the machine when taking the cover on and off (we could add a lining instead, but that's more work than flat-felling)
• Installing a zipper - so that the cover of a tall machine can be put on / taken off by one person, instead of needing two. If it's a short machine, you can skip the zipper and replace the basted seam below with a flat-felled one.
• Sewing a hem - so that the bottom of the cover hangs down and stays put
• Sewing large items - because the machines we want to cover are for people, not for ants 😂 (this skill largely comes down to: turn the bag inside/right-side -out as needed so that you can sew concave-side-up, not concave-side-down. only a small area around and in front of the needle needs to be flat. sew a little, rearrange the next bit of the seam to be flat, sew that bit, repeat. avoid relying on pins as much as you can.)

Procedure:

1. Measure machine width W, length L, and height H, with W shorter than L if they are different.
2. Cut or construct a rectangle of fabric () wide and () long. Flat-fell any seams you made to construct the rectangle.
3. Baste the long edges together to make a tube.
4. Arrange the tube so the basted seam is in the middle of the short edge. Sew the top short edge shut and flat-fell the seam.
5. Turn the tube right side out, and arrange it so the basted seam is along one edge, forcing the top seam to fold in half to make two triangles. Sew across each triangle at the level where the width of the triangle matches W.
6. Fold each triangle down so the point of the triangle lies on the top seam. Sew along the top seam to fix the triangle in place.
7. Mark and press hem.
8. Install a zipper into the basted long seam, lining up the bottom of the zipper with the bottom of the hem. Ensure zipper tape encloses any raw fabric edges along the long seam.
9. Clip and flat-fell the remaining bit of long seam at the top that the zipper doesn't cover.
10. Sew hem.
11. Add handles? add an anchor loop to the bottom by the zipper? add a loop to hang it from the wall when not in use?