More canvas work

This photo was taken at Coffs Harbour en route to Queensland (about 3 weeks ago). Here are the lee cloths I made to keep the cockpit warmer and drier while sailing. We were very happy to have these when we did our chilly overnight trip. Once again the sewing isn't pretty as it was a learning curve (with no pattern to work from). The walking foot was a big help in managing the canvas.

Basically, it's a rectangular piece of canvas finished with turnover seams. After the basic rectangle was finished, we inserted plastic grommets which involved punching a suitable hole out of the canvas and then assembling a grommet piece on either side of the fabric and snapping it together.

In between each grommet I sewed a hook through sewable plastic. This was a little frustrating as my machine has a low shank foot and the hook was quite high which mean't I couldn't sew as close to the hook as I would like. Also the needle kept getting caught in the plastic and I had to keep an eye on it otherwise it just pulled out of the machine.

A piece of stretch cord was then threaded through the grommets allowing us to hook the cord around the life lines to secure it on the boat. This has proved a really simple mechanism for fastening the cloths onto the boat but also being able to undo the areas we need to when accessing other boat bits.