Long time readers will know I was once a keen cyclist. Surgery on my back to remove a tumor followed by a house fire that destroyed my road bike has meant that for the past 3 and a bit years I haven’t been on a bike. Post surgery my torso has had issues rotating (I knew this would be a result of the surgery and the specialists said not to worry it would come back in time) this meant looking over my shoulder for oncoming traffic was an issue and then I lost my bike so I kind of just let things be.
Now with more time at home due to the COVID lockdown and then after just trying to stay away from people, I thought it would be a good time to get my shopper bike out of the garage. It was in the apartment when the fire happened and pretty much just got shoved into the garage of the building where it has been ever since. I wasn’t sure if the brake cables etc had safely survived the fire so I dropped it in to our local bike shop for a service. Apart from the guys being amazed that it survived a fire and how filthy it was, the bike itself was in good condition. It got a good clean and service before coming home again.
Long term it’s going to live in the garage of the building which is dark, dusty and not the cleanest of places. My idea is that I’ll be able to go down unlock it, pop the basket or panniers on then go for a ride or tp the shops etc. Which means either cleaning or dusting it each time I want to ride or coming up with a better solution.
Part 1 of a better solution is a saddle cover. I decided to use a waterproof fabric I picked up from Nomura Tailor last time we were in Japan because then I can pop it in my bag and use it to cover the leather saddle should I ever get caught in the rain or have to leave it outside in the rain.
Using some non iron on interfacing I traced around the basic shape of the saddle. Adding seam allowance I measured the circumference and then drew a 7cm rectangle the same length. quickly cut it out of some poplin, sewed it together and checked the fit. Adjusting the length a touch to make sure the seam didn’t interfere with the nose of the saddle I then cut it from the waterproof fabric using a rotary cutter with a slightly older blade. I knew the cutting would totally dull a new blade so took the risk on using an older one with more pressure and it worked.
The nature of waterproof fabric means as soon as you puncture it with needles or pins that is a point water can get through, that meant no pins being used and fingers crossed no unpicking. The checked underside of the fabric is a slightly brushed cotton that glides through the machine with no problems, to ease around the curved areas I bumped up the stitch length to just over 3 and changed my needle to a leather needle. it made a bit of a thunking sound going through the fabric but there was minimal needle penetration and the stitches formed smoothly with no tension issues.
Fitting the rectangle to the upper curved panel went really well, stitching the channel for the drawcord was where the issues started. Basically my machine didn’t want to feed the laminated fabric through under the pressor foot. I swapped feet, lowered the feed dogs (seriously only the second ever time in my life I’ve had to do that on this machine) all to no avail.
Then I remembered a trick Laura from Bobbin and Ink once showed me. Grabbing some matte sticky tape I covered the bottom of my regular machine foot piercing through where the needle would go. Hey Presto! it worked! glided though and made stitching the channel easy.
Using a reflective shoelace from Prym (you can never have too much reflective stuff when it comes to bikes) I threaded it through the channel and into a drawcord. Fitting the now finished cover over the saddle I pulled the drawcord to secure it.
I’m super happy with how cute it looks and how practical it will be for keeping the bike clean in the garage and dry if I ever get stuck out in the rain.
Pattern: self drafted
Fabric: waterproof fabric from Nomura Tailor Kyoto Japan, reflective shoelace from Prym, drawcord puller from stash
Alterations: none, just remember the sticky tape trick for next time you sew this fabric!
Only not so much, my skirt was too short, like much too short. In a panic and under time pressure I basically threw it back into my to do pile where it has been floundering ever since.
Showing that a little bit of a break and some creative thinking means that everything can be salvaged just sometimes we need to slow down and take a step back to find our solutions.It was also approved by the cat (an important part of the process that I’m sure all cat owners will agree with me).
Pattern: my own bodice block with a modified skirt
