Working jib sail almost complete

I almost finished sewing the working jib sail.

My first stitches are ugly ... but they are slowly getting better. I spent about 4 hours learning how to use the sewing machine and adjusting it using some scrap fabric. After a lot of "bird nests", I got it under control. But then when I started sewing the sails, I had a whole new set of problems. The hardest part is feeding the large pieces of fabric through the machine and keeping the stitch straight and evenly spaced. Having an uneven stitch just looks a little funky and doesn't seem to affect the seam's strength too much, so I'm not too worried about it. (Luckily the sail maker sold me white thread that matches the white fabric, so sewing mistakes are not too conspicuous).

The sailmaker sold me a bunch of double-sided basting tape. Sewing the sails would be impossible without this stuff. Even the pros use it. I basically just tape everything together before sewing and then nothing moves when it goes through the sewing machine. The tape just stays hidden in the seam permanently after sewing.

My cheap little machine sews through very many layers of material surprisingly well. At one corner of the sail, I sewed through 8 layers of 4.4oz sail cloth and two layers of thick webbing.

So here's a little description of how this sail is constructed. The horizontal sail panels are sewn together with a 5/8" overlap seam with two rows of zig-zag stitches. The corners are reinforced with 4 layers of additional fabric patches. Here is a couple of pics after the panels and corner patches were sewn together, but before the edges and corner hardware are done.




At each corner there is an attachment point for halyards and sheets (ropes). One corner has a D-ring. The D-ring is attached to the sail with multiple pieces of webbing that are sewed onto the corner patches. The other two corners have wire thimbles. The thimbles are attached to a wire that sewn into the luff edge of the sail (kinda like pipping on upholstery). Each of these attachment points is heavily reinforced with thick twine that is hand sewn. The thimbles are further reinforced by a brass ring that's sewn into the sail next to it, then twine secures them together.

All the hand sewing is done with very heavy sailmaker twine. The hand sewing was pretty easy since I used an awl to pre-poke the holes and a coin to push the needle through. The corners are dressed with little pieces of leather, which is just there to prevent chafing. Here's some pics of the wire thimbles and wire sewn into the sail. (The leather is partially sewn on at the moment.)




Bronze jib snaps are attached behind the steel wire all along the luff edge to attach the sail to the fore-stay wire on the boat. You can see one of these snaps installed in one of the pics above. Without this wire in the sail, the grommets that the jib snaps attach to would just rip out of edge of the sail.

The other edges (the foot and leech) are just double-hemmed.

So I just have to finish stitching on the leather patches and then I'll have a perfectly functional jib sail (with some comically ugly stitches in a few spots ... but oh well).