I quilt. I find it one of the most forgiving forms of textile art, akin to making soup. Dressmaking, to me, is like pastry. If you start with your ingredients the wrong temperature, it doesn’t matter what you do next, it will never turn out. If you cut your fabric the wrong direction, just throw the whole project away. Whereas with quilts, there’s always a little room to zhuzh. If your soup is too salty, add a potato. If your fabric isn’t a perfect square, you can fix it on the go.
However, with the house renovation project, my Bernina has sat unopened for about five years. And a few years ago, wandering through a charity shop, I opened a bench (because I always open drawers and doors and benches) and there was a metal body Bernina from the early 1950s. The guy plugged it in and it seemed to run, so I bought it. Figuring it could be a straight stitch work horse. I found the manual on-line. But it really sat next to my original Bernina until this spring. With all the renovation stuff and moving libraries at work for a few years in a row, my capacity for projects that required decisions was nonexistent outside of the necessary.
Still, this spring, I had a friend over and she and I looked at it, cleaned it up a bit, and threaded it. But there was something not quite right. And then I had another friend, who generally sews on older machines, visiting and I had her look at it. And she took some time with the manual, and the machine and we still couldn’t get it to hook with the bobbin thread and sew a neat stitch. Or any stitch really. And it was that moment where I had to decide how much time, energy and money I was going to invest in this machine when I already had a functioning machine both at home and at my mom’s. I decided I had already put in enough effort. So I took it to the dechetterie where they will make sure everything that can be recycled will be and incinerate the rest.
And that was it for sewing at home. I didn’t pull out my original Bernina. End of May til end of school was a revolving door of house guests if the end of term wasn’t already enough on my plate. But the sewing room is marginally more organized and perhaps closer to useable. I hope.
At my mom’s, I pulled out the Brother XL 2600i that I bought I don’t even know how many years ago. (According to Amazon, July 10, 2016…) It’s a good little machine and there are plenty of YouTube videos with this model as the star to make it easy to figure out. I bought a foot for it that will allow me to free motion quilt. And boy, is this going to take some practice. So I got some insulbright and I’m making hot pads. It’s four layers that the machine is going through and this little Brother is handling it like a champ.
So here’s to getting some projects started and completed this summer. And learning some new skills and practicing old ones.
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