Patience with Memory

My husband claims I'm not patient enough but I disagree. In this post I'm going to tell you about waiting for two and a half years to get a sewing machine part replaced. In my book, that's patience. It all started with a mere $6 purchase of a Janome Memory Craft 3000. No cords but for only $6 how could I go wrong? Oh, so many ways! First off, the power cord and foot control cost an additional $50 but that didn't seem too bad. When they arrived I tried to find out if it even worked and it not only worked, it stitched really nice: quiet, consistent, a very nice sewing machine until I tried to change the stitch length. Nothing. I tried to change the stitch width: nothing. The buttons would push but didn't work. Taking it all apart, the board that controls these functions was, of course, a maze of soldered connections and some of them had failed. You can't get these boards so I put the sewing machine in deep storage and hoped I might learn something down the road that might help in the repair or could use it as a parts machine.

I stumbled upon the Janome MC3000 again while cleaning out and moving sewing machines around and this time I checked to see if parts might be available and, to my shock, I could buy a new K-board. The price was steep so I thought I'd just wait and see if I could catch a sale. Missing the 20% off sale for Black Friday, I did manage to get it for 15% off in the next month. I was so excited to be able to finally get this machine to run but here's what I found when I opened the package:

K-board with broken section on left

One end was snapped off! You can see the screen is also wonky with a blacked out portion so this wasn't going to work. I contacted the company, sent back photos of the packaging, a mere padded envelope with a bubble wrapped sleeve, and they sent me a new board:

New K-board intact

I've taken the old one apart so many times, checking for model numbers and such, that it was easy to pull all of this apart and get it back together. Here's the original board:

Removed K-board

What I noticed later was how black the buttons were and the new one was very white. Age? Was it in worse shape than I realized? All of the functions seemed to work except for those two buttons but it might have been worse that I thought. Now to see how it all worked together and, with much fiddling with the tension I could now get this stitch sample:

Janome Memory Craft 3000 stitch sample

Pretty good, huh?I am very satisfied with this repair and sewing machine with its new lease on life. It wasn't cheap but it was within reason and such a good machine at that:

Janome Memory Craft 3000

It still sews very quietly, free arm, front storage compartment, thirty different stitches, needle up/down, needle threader, printed out manual, and now you know it has a brand new board and cords. This was very satisfying and someone will get a very reliable sewing machine, solid, and a great sewing experience. Whew!

Christmas finally got taken down since we are having below zero temps and the Christmas tree was in the porch. The porch is only heated via a space heater and needs to be closed off for a month or so. That entailed sorting through everything before putting it away since we decided to have a garage sale this summer and no time like the present to decide which things were no longer needed or wanted. There's a box of fabric, too, and with the Textile Center Garage Sale coming up in April it will be a time for cleaning out. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so I'm home and getting ready for my 93 year old mother-in-law to come for lunch. This is always a joy as she likes to get out and is so appreciative of anything we do. Might we each have such sunny dispositions and especially at her age!