Goodbye Mr Smith

And hello Brothers…

I have a bit of a problem with sewing machines. I have great difficulty resisting a really lovely piece of machinery, which is how I ended up with 4 sewing machines, 3 cabinets and an overlocker.
However, with the best will in the world I have neither the space nor the need for all of them, so I assured Robert that at least one of them would be moving on in due course. Which it has now done.

The sewing machine affectionately known as “A wooden leg named Smith” (due to an accident with a flight of stairs many years ago) was a lovely 1960’s machine with a zigzag stitch, but was superseded by a very similar machine but with a few more features (and a cabinet to house it). So it has now gone to another home, where it is already being used much more frequently.

I still have a 3/4 sized, 1958 Singer in the loft, with its cabinet being housed in the garage, that I have yet to rehome/find room for, but my current line up looks like this:
Mmmm. :-)

They are, in order, my trusty old Singer 201K, a Brother 929D overlocker (sharing a cabinet/table) and my “new” Brother 350, which has a note in the manual saying “Purchased – 8th Sept 1966”, which came with its own Horn cabinet for the bargain price of £25!! (most Horn cabinets go on Ebay for £200+). I know this little Brother looks much like Smith, but it comes with a set of cams to control the stitch formation, which is a step further than the simple zigzag function of the other machine. Not that I’ve used it yet, but I have the perfect project coming up!

(You may have noticed the lack of actual sewing in this post, but I have been doing a hand sewing course this month, so results are slower than usual! More on that next month).

Lovebirds

Well, in an unusually consistent burst of productivity I have an fact managed to complete the curtains for my girls’ bedroom – in less than a week!!

This was a real labour of love as we started with a pair of black and white Ikea Eivor curtains that I bought for a specific project a while back which didn’t come to anything, so they have been lurking in my stash ever since. However, there were a couple of problems with them as they stood….

1. They were too sheer, so needed lining.
2. They were far too long.
3. They were tab tops and needed a curtain tape header.
4. While pretty and charming they were very monochrome.

The outcome of all this was that I kept the bottom hem (it seemed like a good idea at the time), cut the tops off, and undid the side seams. This made it pretty to easy to attach a full lining, and add the gathering tape.

However the real fun was in adding a splash of colour! Piper and I worked out a colour scheme for each of the birds, and I then a spent a day colouring them in with fabric paints. And apart from dropping a pink paint brush on the fabric it all went very well. (Pink paint crisis averted by widening a branch with some black paint).


The curtains have now been hung, and Piper and Robin are delighted with their new roommates.

Now I have nothing to stop me from embracing the 20 something metres of fabric destined for my lounge and dining room windows… would that count as stashbusting? ;-)