A tip from the web

Late the other night (never a good time to sew) I was getting frustrated by my machine constantly pulling fabric down into the throat plate as I tried to hem my "Staple" dress (started during the May sewing Weekend Away).
After changing the bobbin, needle and rethreading twice I decided to give it away for the evening and try again later.

The next morning I woke up and remembered this post by Lolita Patterns on how to make a temporary straight stitch plate. Before reading this post I never even knew such a thing as a plate exclusively for straight stitching existed but now I do I'm wondering why all machines don't come with one...
Anyway as I do not have said plate for straight stitching - or any painters tape as was suggested in the post- I layered together some masking tape (for low tack) and cello tape (to add a bit more strength), and stuck it over the wide all-purpose (all stitch widths) hole on the throat plate.

Before taping

After taping

AND guess what? It worked!!!! I was able to sew the whole hem around without any of the slightly stretchy synthetic dress fabric getting drawn down or gnarls of thread catching.
Yay for using something I read on a sewing blog within 2 weeks of reading it! Usually this sort of stuff gets saved in my "favourites" folder and never looked at again. 
I think I might go back and check out some of those old saved post links...you never know what awesome nuggets of sewing information you may have stumbled upon while browsing the web.

 Happy sewing!

Kate :)