My sewing books
Unsurprisingly, my sewing adventures have come to a grinding halt!
It’s hard to find the time to sit down and get right into it in between the office job, home jobs, freelance work and life in general.
But I have *heaps* of inspiration sitting right next to me:
The Complete Book of Sewing — bought this on Fern’s recommendation!
The Sewing Book and the Complete Book of Sewing are technically quite similar in being like a sewing text book. But the way techniques are explained are quite different and makes for interesting reading.
Simple Sewing and Sew! are both gorgeous books! I keep finding myself drooling over the different projects.
All I need to do is find the time to go from inspiration to reality. Hmm, I can has a few more hours in my day?
Meet Suzie the Sewing Lady (and see how I’ve royally screwed up)
This is Suzie:
Suzie is a Singer Stylist Zig Zag 457, a model from 1968. She’s 11 years younger than Buela, the other sewing machine in my life at the moment.
I’ve been feeling a bit guilty since I picked up Suzie last night; like I’m cheating on Buela, who’s packed away in the corner of my bedroom.
Buela is a beautiful girl and runs like a charm, but she’s only got two speeds: full throttle and full stop. I don’t have the required 1337 sewing skillz to keep up with her; my stitches were WAY off if I tried to do anything too creative (like follow a pattern).
Suzie runs just as beautifully as Buela, and lets me drive in first gear, meaning I was able to sew nice curves and such. Suzie had me in a very good mood when I went to bed last night.
But then this morning I got up and planned to practice a bit more on Suzie before trying something closer to a Proper Sewing Project. And suddenly the feed dog stopped working. After much Googling I was feeling brave enough to undertake some investigative surgery on Suzie.
And then, I found the source of the problem (excuse the blurry panicked photo):
SHIT. Part of one of the gears (plastic ones!) that operate the feed dog has melted. While part of me is chuffed that I successfully diagnosed the issue ALL BY MYSELF (and Google) another part of me is feeling so so SO guilty.
I’ve probably caused the gear to melt. It’s not even MY sewing machine. I don’t deserve a sewing machine!
I’ve called a couple of places and spoke native Sewing Machine fluently enough for them to understand what I needed and how much it would cost to replace the gear. Just waiting for Suzie’s native owner to give the okay for me to go and take care of it.
This sucks :( I try to do the right thing and borrow other people’s property instead of buying something (cheapish) myself. I play the patient game, borrow two machines and now I’ve gone and broken one.
And so the waiting game continues…
Meet Buela the Sewing Beast
One of the items on my holiday to-do list was to acquire a sewing machine and get down with my stitchy self.
I, of course, forgot how crafty my in-laws are and was told in no uncertain terms that I Should Not Purchase A Sewing Machine, Here Borrow Ours For A Really Long Time.
The first I’ve adopted is my finance’s sister-in-law’s grandmother’s 1957 Lemair Helvetia. Also known as Buela the Beast:
It’s similar to mum’s old machine I used to use when I was little – I think it’s referred to as a zig-zag external front loader. Also, it’s heavier than a semi trailer.
Courtesy of teh interwebs, I found someone had scanned in an old manual – sticky tape and all – so I was able to suss out the basics with threading and whatnot.
I’ve been down to Spotlight to get some basics like calico so I could have a practice run. The machine runs beautifully, though I’m struggling to find a nice, slow speed so I can try to keep on the straight and narrow.
Now to decide what to make!
