Shade Please

 

One of our outdoor sunshades got a bit shredded in the windstorm this winter. This one is our very oldest and it stays up year round. I've already repaired it once before and now it's time once again. It's now sunny again and time for the seasonal shades to go back up so I'm really missing this one. It blocks most of the early morning sun, so I can't ever sleep in past 7am. The kind of silly concerns of the retired, I know I know.

During the mad dash to take this down during the storm, I really thought it had gotten shredded, but in fact, it did not. It just split at the main seam line and along the side seams. The fabric although faded is still quite strong, the weak point is the thread.

There's also some very confused lichen growing on it. I'm sure it would rather be on one of our old trees instead of a man-made sunshade. I'll have to scrape this off before we put it back up once the repairs are done. Also, if you compare this picture to the one above, you can see how much this has faded over the years. It's held up better than any other outdoor fabric we've used though.

Cruella rides again! My Pfaff has a name, because I sold my Porsche 914 to buy her, and he had a name, Bud. I had some 101 Dalmations stickers that my kids found and were sticking on everything in the house, including the machine. It's an illustration of Cruella, thus the name.

I got all set up out on the deck on a very overcast day, but not drippy foggy. Perfect for outdoor sewing. The reason I'm sewing outside with an extension cord is because this thing is rather big, and definitely somewhat dirty. 

I'm also using a UV resistant outdoor thread in the top and bobbin

It all went pretty quickly once I re-learned how to rethread and wind a bobbin. Every machine is a little different of course.

I'm really glad that the sewing seems to be holding up fairly well near the hardware because my machine was not up to sewing through that thick of a lump. Hand stitching this section would be very tough.

I even used some Wonderclips at one point. 

Could I have thrown this away and bought another one, yes, of course. But! I knew I could fix it so that it would likely last another two years and put off the purchase of yet another thing made out of plastic. I had the time, tools, and set up to get it done, so it was worth it to me to give it a try. It'll get re-hung this weekend, and then I can finally sleep in.