Saturday, April 1, 2017

Foot Pedal Bed :: A Tutorial

I started a new event at my shop called "First Saturday Demo Day." When I can, I'll do a tutorial of the demo for you here on the first Saturday of the month. Today is the first of what I hope will be many first Saturday tutorials for you!

Today I'll show you how to make a foot pedal bed.


This is a handy little item to help keep your machine foot pedal from running away from you.

What you will need:

  • One piece of rug gripper, 6.5" by 10". Use two pieces if your rug gripper is flimsy. 
  • (1) 2.5" by WOF (width of fabric) piece of fabric for the binding
  • (1) 4" by 8" piece of fabric to make the pillow
  • some kind of stuffing for your pillow
  • (optional, but recommended) a walking foot for your machine to use when sewing on the binding



You should probably measure your foot pedal before cutting your rug gripper.


My foot pedal measures about 4.5" by 7.5". I added about 2" to the width and 2.5" to the length to arrive at the size 6.5" by 10". If your foot pedal is significantly different in size to mine, make the necessary measurement adjustments.

All seam allowances are 1/4"

Fold the 4" by 8" piece of fabric in half lengthwise and sew the long side seam.


Roll this so that the sewn seam is at the center and press the seam open.


Sew one of the open short sides shut.


Turn this right side out.


This is pretty easy to do, but I wanted to show you my turning tools. This Turn-it-All tool makes turning tubes so easy!! If you don't have one already, you should get one. I use this all the time and it's not very expensive. (Retails for $10.99 at my shop)

Stuff your pillow to the desired firmness. The tube is longer than it needs to be so be sure to measure it against the width of your piece of rug gripper. Mine needs to be about 6.5" long stuffed.


When it is sufficiently stuffed, sew the open end shut and trim off the excess fabric.


Set the pillow aside for the moment. Take the 2.5" by WOF piece of fabric to your ironing surface and press it in half lengthwise, right side out. This is just like you would do for making binding for a quilt.


Sew the binding to what will be the bottom side of your foot pedal bed, this side that will sit against the floor.

Use whatever method of ending the binding you want. I used the "tuck end tail inside beginning tail" method. Photos below:




Turn your partially bound piece of rug gripper over so that the binding is underneath. Baste the pillow to this about 1" down from one of the short ends.


Pull the binding from the bottom side to the top side and clip or pin it in place. Clover Wonder Clips are great for this! Another must-have notion for me.


Topstitch the binding in place all the way around.


Put your new foot pedal bed on the floor underneath your machine and "tuck in your foot pedal" for a day of sewing!



2 comments:

Barb said...

I so need to do one of these...thanks for the tutorial.

Susan @ Blackberry Creek said...

Your mom showed us this at bee yesterday. I have one I bought that doesn’t work too well. I’m going to make one of these.