All That Lace

Last week I bought the mother load of lace and trims and told you all about my great find in Getting Trim. Now I had to put all of the lace to a good use so I consulted  Pinterest to find some of my previous ideas on my own boards had to do with little girl clothes, baby girls to be exact. Why not use some of that lace on diaper covers? I had a pattern, way more fabric than I could ever use, so I cut a few out and started to sew. Here's my first attempt:

Hawaiian print with yellow lace ruffles

This was going to be my trial run because I had so much trouble with the elastic in the legs. You see, I got another serger, a Bernina 1100DA and she is remarkable.

Yes, it's a real Bernina serger, model 1100DA

What she has that others only talked about was an special foot where you could feed the elastic into the special foot called "the elasticator" and it would trim and sew the elastic onto your fabric. Great idea! But it only worked on samples, not on the real project. After the above experimental diaper cover, I decided to only use the serger for the side seams and crotch seam. I applied the leg elastic by folding the fabric edge, zigzaging the elastic over this edge, then turning it and zigzagging again. It is really simple and makes the elastic entirely enclosed, so important for a baby's skin. I had fun with this so I made the following:

Diaper covers!

It uses a large amount of ruffled lace, small amounts of fabric, goes pretty quick, and aren't they cute? The back gets the layers of ruffles and then the final layer is around the whole waist. There are a ton like this on Etsy so not sure if I will sell them in my shop or if I will stockpile until the fall craft shows. Here's one last pair I'm really happy with:

Those layers of ruffles were already made and I just matched them to similar fabric

This has been fun and I'm learning about my newest serger. Will she replace my Huskylock 1000L? There is a distinct possibility even if I am a Viking kind of a sewer. Now that makes the Pfaff 4872 serger with coverstitch and the Bernina 1100DA that I just can't let go. Yet.

Getting Trim

The weather is turning into spring so we were out and about on Saturday with sewing adventures.  It started with a possible Kenmore in a cabinet that John "found" in his parent's house. I kept asking and he kept saying Friday or Saturday would be better. Saturday afternoon was going to work out as I also planned to pick up some sewing trims in the same area. At this point my husband joined in the fun and we were going to make an afternoon of pick-ups and dropping off.

But no time or location was forthcoming from John and the Kenmore. A terse email stated he would call me at 11:15 that morning. That's pretty specific! No call. I call John at 12:30 and he sounded a bit confused and finally said it was sold. Okkkkkkaaayyy. Easy come, easy go, but I'm always wondering if there is some kind of etiquette for Craigslist that I'm not aware of. Is it first call first served, first show up first served, or something else? I run my business (and I understand most people on CL aren't running a business but just looking to make money from things they no longer use) with the policy of first call who gives enough information to show serious interest gets first chance. For instance:

Text: Still have the Singer sewing machine?
Me: I have 2 Singer sewing machines listed, one for $80, one for $125.
Text: $80
Me: Yes, the Singer 99 is still available. When would you like to see it?
no more texts

Email: Still have the Singer sewing machine for sale?
Me: Yes, I have 2 currently listed. One is in near perfect condition so it's $125 in a bentwood case and the other one has some nicks along the front edge so it is reduced to $80. Both have manuals and a full set of accessories including a buttonhole attachment.
Email: I think I want the $80 one.
Me: That's fine. When would you like to see it to try it out?
Email: Are you home during the day?
Me:This week I have Tuesday and Thursday evenings open at 6:30 and Saturday morning. Would any of those times work?
no more emails

Neither one of these requests shows a huge amount of interest but when I get a third request should I consider either one of them as contenders? Probably not but my usual practice is to contact the last request (semi-serious) via email so ask if they would still like to see the Singer 99. Most of the time they have simply forgotten to get back with a better time and this gets them back on track. I let that first request go because of the brevity and actual lack of any follow-through on their part. But what about when the day and time is agreed upon as with John and his parent's Kenmore? Okay, not an exact time but Saturday afternoon is specific enough. Before I sold it out from under someone I would at least give them a call.  So now my rant is over. Thank you for listening and I do feel better now.

That made our appointment with Dee all the sweeter when we show up to buy a box of piping in various colors that averaged only 27 cents each.  I noticed she had other ads and said I might be interested in looking at those items, too. We arrive to find this small box of piping that started it all:

90 packages of piping!

then a large flat storage container with trims:

and I thought this was a whole lot of trim

plus this three drawer unit on rollers full of lace trims and it's narrower companion:

The whole kit and caboddle of trims

Dee was seriously downsizing. She also had several sewing machines that I wasn't interested in (but I still liked looking at them) and gave me a good deal on the trims with the rolling storage containers included! My husband and I looked at each other and said "Sold!" She even helped us take them out to the car but I'm thinking she didn't want us to change our minds.

A few more errands and many hours later we bring everything inside and I start to sort. Wow, that's way too much trim but I do manage to sort it into a drawer of white, one of ivory or non-white, colored or printed trims, ribbon, yarn, and weird stuff, Most are in their own zippered plastic bags with the width and/or yardage. My next job is going to be pulling out my bins of trims and deciding what to keep, what to sell. Already I have a bag of trim that's going to go home with a grandmother who is buying a handcrank for her granddaughter to learn to sew on. Why not have some lace to try and sew with?

How much did all of this cost? As it turns out, the money I did not spend on the Kenmore from John and the money I set aside for the piping equaled the asking price for all four containers of trim. Looks like it all worked out in the end after all, huh?

Out and About

I spend a week in Arizona recently, land of sun and much warmer than Minnesota in February, and managed not to buy any sewing machines for a week. BUT before I could even got out of Minnesota I had a whirlwind of activity that almost kept me from going. Almost...

While everything was quiet for a week before I left I worked on catching up with a few sewing and knitting projects. The day before I left I connected with Anne who did not drive so I agreed to make a house call after work, bringing three sewing machines for her perusal. After two dozen emails trying to figure out what Anne wanted, needed, and could afford, I brought a newer (1980's) Elna 1500, older Dressmaker, and older still Singer 403. Just a glance told Anne that the Singer 403 was just like the one her mother used and it-was-the-one, we still tried out all three "just in case." Each machine sounded, felt, and sewed differently:

Elna 1500

Dressmaker SWA 2000 (JA-8)

Singer 403A

Elna 1500: wide range of built-in stitches including stretch, easy to use, drop-in bobbin

Dressmaker: only zigzag and straight stitch built in, cams for decorative stitches, left-needle homing

Singer 403: only straight stitch built-in, cams for all zigzag and all other stitches, gear driven

The Elna was the easiest to use but looked too modern for Anne, the Dressmaker wasn't the one, but the Singer, even though it was perfect for her, she needed lessons. I promised to come back at a later date to see how she was doing and to bring extra bobbins that I forgot and Anne was in heaven with her Singer 403.

On the day I flew out, we were busy picking up a sewing machine I won on the Goodwill auction site:

Kenmore 158-1430

 Next door was the Goodwill Outlet where you can buy by-the-pound and Wednesday is senior days so we got an extra 25% off. Score! What do we find while making our way to the back of the store? A Kenmore 385-17324 without a power cord/foot control. That hasn't stopped me before so we put it in the cart only to find a White Rotary head. It needs a treadle but that hasn't stopped me before either and joins the Kenmore in the cart. A bright green jacket joins the melee with a few other things and we check out with a large clear plastic bin: $20 for all of it!

White Rotary bc (before cleaning)

Kenmore 385-17324

Once we get home I bring up a Singer 15-91 I had been using but it was now going home with John. Just that morning I get a text asking if it was available so we arrange for John to come over on his lunch hour. As it turns out, I have to take the head out of the cabinet so I can bring it up the stairs in two manageable pieces instead of one very heavy one and that means I need to take apart some of the wiring, too. John tells me he's going to use it for an upholstery project and had done some research to find the right model. It was going to be in his garage workshop so its lack of decals and cabinet in rough shape didn't bother him in the least. See: there's a machine for everyone and every machine finds its perfect home.

Singer 15-91

After John left I waited at the window for another person who was delivering a cabinet. I know, I know, I try not to buy cabinets and this one didn't even come with a sewing machine but it was a parlor cabinet that I have loved for some time. This one seemed to be in good shape and the price was low but I worried about getting it back out of my car once I got home. That was settled when the buyer said he could deliver it! He also gave me some good information about how he planned to refinish it with only denatured alcohol so I will try that out, too, once the weather gets warmer. It only needs to have veneer replaced on the front curved surface, a waterfall accent, but that is not expensive and I'm ready for this new challenge.

Parlor cabinet to disguise your treadle

Only an hour until I had to leave, just enough time to shower and finish packing. What's the score? Two sewing machines were sold, three machines and one cabinet were bought. And I got on that jet plane, knowing when I was coming back again. Life is grand.

Music

Hobbies have a way of morphing into side-hobbies, those things we collect in support of or as an enhancement of the original hobby. Sewing machine lovers also collect miniature or child sized sewing machines, thimbles, wooden thread spools, even yardsticks with local business imprints. In my case, I have become the owner of two sewing machine music boxes.

The first one came from a co-worker who found it while visiting her parents in Oklahoma. When she spied it she knew she just had to bring it back for me. I was charmed and not at all dismayed that it no longer produced music because my husband and I had already worked on restoring a music box that is his mothers. For her 90th birthday we gave her a music box that played Ave Maria and she told us the story of a music box her husband gave her years ago that no longer worked. I asked to see it and thought we might be able to restore it, having a broken music movement and missing a few of the pieces that would latch the box. As it was dissected, we discovered the spring that winds up to drive the pin drum (the part with the notes for the song) was broken. That is a fatal error so we just bought a new movement that played the same tune. We had it all in pieces so could see how it worked so the new music box was less of a mystery. This new one showed signs of rust so it got a gentle cleaning and a dose of sewing machine oil. Nothing much happened but with Christmas decorations coming out it was pushed into a back corner of a shelf.

As Christmas decorations were put away at the end of January (you read that right: the end of January) I picked up the little sewing machine music box to find the key turning! It was trying to play the tune but not a note came out of it. Only three screws held it together so I opened it up again to find the comb was not in place. I wound it up, moved the comb so it could hit the notes to produce the tune. This took a couple of tried but it finally played and sounded quite nice. It only needed a band to represent the leather belt of a treadle and it was as good as new. I brought it back into work to show my co-worker and she was delighted, as I was, too.

This led to another musical sewing machine, just one I found on Ebay, but a delightful one anyway. Have you even felt the pressure of an auction ending in less than 8 minutes and you just discovered this marvelous item? Quick research showed this music box was worth twice the asking price so I dove in and got it. Just a bit of cleaning up, adding a tiny spool of thread at the top, and she was as good as new.

Maybe you have started collecting some items that relate to your hobbies or maybe those collections are actually the hobby and not the original hobby. Okay, that just got confusing, but you get the idea. I also have some children's sewing machines that are intriguing but just not too practical for use but there's no chance they will become more important than my vintage sewing machines. Yet.

What tune is played on those little music boxes? You haven't guessed yet? It's the 1947 hit recorded by Dinah Shore titled  Buttons & Bows, of course.

Zig Zagging Along

A recent post on a Facebook sewing page showed a zig zag attachment for a Kenmore sewing machine and I became intrigued. So those straight stitch models can zig zag after all? Well, that depends. Singer came out with a zig zag attachment years ago and one came with my own beloved Singer 99 gifted to me by my next door neighbors. I did try it out at the time but memory grows dim over time so maybe it was a good substitute for a full zig zag sewing machine? After all, the buttonhole attachment kits are wonderful so why not the zig zag attachments?

Checking Ebay for said Kenmore zig zag attachments, I found several that were going to be under $15 with S&H included so maybe I should try one! In the listing was also the Chadwick zig zagger and I remembered I had one already, part of a group of supplies that came in a machine this past year. I set up a Singer 99 in crinkle finish and got it installed:

Chadwick model in a pretty small box

It's not too much to look at, installing like a buttonholer or a ruffler (but it's so shiny!)

Back screw adjusts for width, only adjustment available.

As you can see by the sample above and below, it's not a great zig zag stitch:

Widest width and closest stitch

Not too great is it?  The way it works is to move the fabric left and right since the needle cannot move in those directions to form the typical zig zag. This means it's not going to work too well on a variety of fabrics but the firm woven should be ideal. So on to the Singer zig zagger attachment. Here it is in the original box with 4 cams for the different styles of stitches:

Singer Zig Zagger

With this model you have choices, which is nice but still not a great improvement:

Singer Zig zagger in action

Cams lined up with the stitches they made

The gold stitching is brighter in person so I apologize for the faintness of the stitches but they are uneven at best and these were the best it could do with a lot of adjusting. It's a far cry from the Singer 401 models and their fine zig zag and we won't even get into Bernina and its superb stitching. Would I use this with a straight stitch model? Maybe if that was all I had and needed to use a zig zag stitch to do some mending but at one time this probably was all some women had and were excited and grateful to have even this much.

Am I going to order one of those Kenmore zig zag attachments? I don't think so...but if one comes with a sewing machine one day I will give it a whirl to see if it's worth it's salt. Until then, I'll stitch with built in stitches or learn to mend without a zig zag stitch. See how spoiled I am?

A Little of This and That

It was the "love weekend" with Valentine's Day and I have a bunch of little things to tell you, not enough for a blog post on each one so here goes:

I got an email through my blog from Brook who reads my posts as a wanna-be vintage sewing machine user. That's how she described herself to me so my quizzical look prompted her to tell me that she thought she would like sewing, bought a nice sewing machine with many bells and whistles, tried to use it, but just didn't take to sewing as she had hoped. Maybe she needed to try a different sewing machine? In the process of looking she came upon a Singer 15-91 in a dumpster. Now, that's not the usual place to look and I don't ask too many questions, but she found out this probably wasn't her dream machine either. Would I like to buy if from her? Possibly....so she brought it over and I looked it over to find it didn't have scary/dangerous electrical connections and the hand wheel moved freely. I thought I could clean it up but it was missing the bobbin case, one of those with the metal "finger" pointing to the left, the 11 o'clock position. I had to order a few of those since I was fresh out of stock but I got her cleaned up:

Singer 15-91: clear coat nearly gone, finish on cabinet, too.

The cabinet needs to be refinished but at least it hasn't been painted and will be an easy strip down job this summer. It was a win-win for Brook and myself but I'm hoping I can interest Brook in the next offering of how-to-use-your-vintage-sewing-machine class at the Fridley Community Center in April. Another listing is going out for a one night session for only $21 so people, please sign up!

Along with sewing machines coming in the door, sometimes I have a revolving door. Ernie was making modified hunting gear and wanted a machine that would pierce some very thick layers of webbing. He brought over some samples of what he was hoping to do and we tried out the Consew industrial and a Singer 15-91 and for his money he went with the 15-91. As always, I guarantee my machines if they do not perform or you find it's just not the machine for you. Yup, that one is coming back mainly because he already had a Kenmore that worked just as hard. Without a compelling reason to have another machine that would do the same thing, he decided it needed to be returned. We were hoping for some bonding with that beautiful machine but, alas, there was no love and I have to sing the old Dean Martin song "Return to Me."

Valentine's Day is a time for a party so why not have a Star Wars theme? You might have read about the Star Wars new movie celebration we had at my work for Study Day in December so my pastor got wind of it and asked if they could use some of the props. Of the 40 people who came there were about a dozen of us in costume Sunday night with robes and capes with light sabers in hand. My husband wore the Obi Wan Kenobi costume I made up for the library display

Star Wars props

 and I looked over photos and decided I could come up with an outfit for Rey:

Rey character from Star Wars

It was pretty easy to find cargo pants, neutral shirt, a couple of brown belts, and brown boots. To make the draping (to keep out the desert sand?) I found a long piece of sheer fabric, probably a swag for a curtain rod, that I could use. It came together pretty easily except for the army bag on her belt but I had some fabric that would work and made my own bag. I liked making the blanket stitch on my Viking 1100:

Cool blanket stitch!

We won't be going to a casting call but it was still a lot of fun:

Obi Wan (Jim) with Rey (Karen)

Petal Power

I own a very nice Singer 66 "Red Eye" treadle sewing machine that I rarely use. This makes me sad. With so many other sewing machines it seems a treadle on another floor of the house is just not convenient enough for me to use on a regular basis but that has temporarily stopped. I've joined the TreadleOn Functional Bag TOBE. TOBE stands for TreadleOn Block Exchange, an event where you make a series of quilt blocks on your treadle or hand-crank sewing machine that you can exchange with others except this time it's not quilt blocks but a bag that you can really use. Functional means one that is big enough to carry things home from shopping or carry things for...whatever! I thought this would be a great project and one way to get me to use my Singer Red Eye.

Looking over my vast amount of fabric, I found a box of five inch squares I had cut for the jar pincushion project that didn't get too far. I made more than a dozen but they didn't sell too well and I haven't made any more. The fabrics seemed like a good choice for a bag so I divided them into color groups, downloaded a pattern, and got cutting and sewing. Here's the first bag in the process of planning:

Random placement of squares isn't always the best idea...

First bag done but not well done

Thank goodness you can't see it close up to see how my piecing ability needs more practice and generally using this pattern so that it turns out respectably. I discovered my treadle doesn't backstitch, not a deal breaker, but still a hindrance at times. I also got sore shoulders while treadling so think I need to watch my posture and possibly get a different chair. Okay, so I can write this off as lesson-to-be-learned and start on the next one. This time I make the 3 inch squares into a defined pattern that is repeated, I add width to the bag by adding two rows of squares, and make the bag taller, too:

Bag 2 planning process is more organized

Bag 2 pieced pocket over actual bag fabric

The sewing of the blocks and joining came out so much better this time so the end product looks much more professional (or at least like I know what I'm doing). As it turns out, wider was better but not taller: the proportions are off. I had to cut off the two inches I added on. Adding the bias tape edge along the pocket and repeating it on the top was a good way to pull the bottom design into the top and then adding the folded triangles was a very nice finishing touch. My husband even suggested matching the triangles with the squares, a bit of inspiration that looked good in the end. Handles out of folded hem facing with self-made bias tape finished it off:

Bag 2 finished!

Inside I added a bottom panel to cover up the raw edge of the seam and thick triangle points that resulted when making it flat on the bottom. I didn't quilt it with batting but used interfacing for both the pocket and bag itself so each part is lined and quilted. I'm happy with the way it turned out but think it might be just a bit too fancy to be considered a functional bag but why can't functional be beautiful. too?

Onto the third bag in green fabric. Several had peach accents but I'm trying to play down the peach and give more attention to the green and brown tones. Green bias tape just didn't match so I found some cocoa brown and then tan for the handles. I am getting better at this and I like the larger size of the green tote:

Bag 3 finished with tan handles and brown trim

It seems I have made small, medium, and large in my experimentation:

Back left is green (large), middle is pink (medium), and front is blue (smallest)

The green tote is 18" wide and 16" tall when laid flat, the pink tote is 13" wide by 15" tall, and the blue tote is 11" wide by 15" tall. The green tote is by far the most functional and will be sent to the coordinator of the TreadleOn Functional Bag TOBE. What about the other two? Here's where you come in: I'm going to give away the pink tote (shades of pink, teal, and blue) to one of my faithful SMMavin readers. Just make a comment or send an email before Feb. 14 and I will count up the responses in the order they were received (by time stamp), divide by half, and the one who falls smack in the middle will get the tote in the mail. Ready for a contest? Just let me know of your interest by commenting on this post or via email. Don't want pink and blue? You might have to join the TreadleOn.

Now how about all of those red, white, and blue fabrics that I've accumulated? Do I see another functional bag tote coming up? You bet!