January is very often taken up with organization of papers, and preparation of taxes, and it usually leaves me little time for sewing. I have a number of projects that I have been working on that I want to finish. (So I can start NEW projects, of course!) To that end, I managed to steal two or three afternoons to work on a tote bag for Frankie, my youngest sis.
\nI made the mistake of not choosing pre-quilted fabrics for this project. I let Frankie choose three Batiks that are quite beautiful, so I had to layer them with batting, and quilt them before I completed the project. A friend who quilts helped me with a problem I was having with skipped stitches (I needed a lower number needle, a thinner one), and that helped me move through part of the quilting. Once I had the strips for the handle quilted, I decided to finish making the handle. Imagine a strip four inches wide by 110 inches long. I had to turn the long unfinished edges to meet in the center, and then fold the strip in half one more time, to enclose those raw edges. Then I had to sew them together parallel to each edge and down the middle.
\nApparently, my machine can stitch through four thicknesses of batting and eight thicknesses of Batik, but I forgot a rule you learn early on in sewing: Do not PULL the fabric through the needle. I changed the foot. I changed the needle, I tried re-threading the machine, to no avail. I had messed up the timing, and it had to go to the sewing machine doctor.
\nHe’s a good kid. Before him, his dad worked on this machine. I sew on a Singer 301A which is almost as old as I am, and I love it. I’ve told them that they have to make this machine last as long as I do, and so far, they have. He had it a day and a half, before the called to tell me it was ready to pick up.
\nThis weekend I have a little more time to work on the tote, so I’ll share a picture when it’s done. Thank goodness for good sewing machine doctors!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January is very often taken up with organization of papers, and preparation of taxes, and it usually leaves me little time for sewing. I have a number of projects that I have been working on that I want to finish. … Continue reading