Wrapping Up

It has been a wonderful experience to take this class from Ray White who teaching sewing machine repair no matter what the brand. His principles apply to almost all machines, even industrial and sergers, so I think I'm going to have to take this information home and apply it to the collection of to-be-repaired machines that I own already.

We finished up this morning with check springs, escapement, and setting tensions back to factory settings. Does that sound intimidating? It is! But now I know the vocabulary and how to go about fixing those things. We spent the afternoon saying goodbye to classmates as they took off for Texas and Florida and working on our own machines. We looked at a Singer Featherweight and found out how to take out wound up thread under the bobbin, a Janome that was sold with "multiple problems" that turned out to be only a needlebar that was too low, and then a lesson on sergers. Melinda and I packed up and hauled my six machines out to her car as she left her's behind since she is going to continue on Monday with the advanced class and we chatted with Ray about teaching and Elnas. He showed us some of his treasures and we both realized we could not breathe that rarefied air of owning a restored Elna by such an expert but they do exist!

Dinner was late, as always, but it was worth waiting for as we went to the grounds of the Arcadia Academy to have dinner in their Thee Abbey Kitchen Restaurant.

Arcadia Academy gymnasium

The grounds were originally Arcadia College before the Civil War, but spent most of its years as Ursuline Academy and is now being renovated as as restaurant, bakery, bed & breakfast, and local weddings. They have a ways to go but we sure enjoyed our meal, homemade ice cream for dessert, and even the local talent for live country music while we dined.

Arcadia Academy Chapel

 It will be a long ride home tomorrow but so well worth it. This is a little slice of Americana that we were glad to be a part of when we could get away, spend the time to learn and still enjoy the countryside. I'll have more later about visiting the little shops and some of our special finds but I gotta leave you with something to look forward to, right?