Advice on sewing seatbelt webbing

#1

Hi,
My faithful messenger bag is need in a bit of TLC, the strap needs replacing. I’m not confident my sewing machine at home will cope with sewing through the seatbelt webbing strap so I’m hoping to use the Bernina at SLMS, my questions are:

  • Will the Bernina go through 3 layers of seatbelt webbing?
  • I notice that the bag has been made with quite heavy duty thread, can anybody recommend a good heavy duty polyester thread to use, and what needle to use with it?
    I think I’m right in assuming that no induction is required to use the machine, but do let me know if I’m mistaken. Thanks,
    Simon.
#2

No induction needed for sewing machine, but of course ask if there’s anything you’re unsure about

@textilestechs @StudioNelle @Jonty_Bottomley might be able to advise on the webbing

#3

There is some heavy duty polyester thread in the space, in the 4th from top draw of the textiles cupboard. Not used it myself so unsure what needle. @techfolderkites may know more as I’m pretty sure he’s used it before.
Otherwise trial and error starting with a universal.

Not sure the bernina will be much better than a desktop machine like the Janome, that said I’ve not really used it, maybe it is.
I’ve done similar work on my machine at home, 6 layers was too much but it coped well up til that. Strength wise was okay, more a problem with the needle deflecting through so many layers and hitting the plate below, snapping and marring the plate in the process. Go slow…

#4

Profabrics (pointnorth) had a lot of good sailmaking threads that i used when i used to make tents, all seemed very good quality but this was a couple of years ago. Can’t recall which needles we were using but they were chunky, webbing was pretty easy to machine sew iirc.

#5

Great, thanks for those points. Thinking about I guess webbing should be pretty easy as there are already loads of holes in it. I’ll order some and see how I get on. Thanks again,Simon