Balancing On One Foot: Is October National Sewing Month or What?

Monday, October 24, 2011

Is October National Sewing Month or What?

Whew, it has been awhile!

The month is speeding by: Gregory has returned, Ayla officially has homework, we made a quick visit to Pittsburgh (look at awesome pictures).....

On top of Eve and Matt's downtown apartment building!

A walk in the park with Gramps and Nano

.....everyone succumbed to horrible colds and I have been crafting like a maniac!

Crafting and sewing so much, in fact, that I broke my sewing machine. After almost eight years of ownership, it was due for a tune-up. And while I wasn't happy to hear about a repair, it was a relief to find out that the tension was broken and my recent problems were not just user error.

Two weeks without my sewing machine is suddenly feeling like a very long time. It just so happens that someone placed an order from my Etsy shop the day after I took my machine to the Singer warehouse. (Luckily, he is a patient person!) Halloween is looming and giving me nightmares because as of one week until the festivities: Ayla's Strawberry Shortcake costume is still a twin sheet I bought from the thrift store instead of the cute skirt and chef hat that I have dreamed up!

I thought my sewing machine woes were temporarily stayed over the weekend when I got a response on Freecycle to my request for a loaner. If you've never used Freecycle (and can overlook the thirty plus emails you receive in a day), it is worth investigating. People are very generous and give away amazing things. New baby toys, fancy clothes, building supplies, you name it - items that could very well make a pretty penny are just given away. I am sure people are happy to avoid the annoyance of posting pictures to Craigslist and are certainly relieved to not have to transport old furniture to Goodwill. Regardless, it is an interesting network of people that are trying to keep items out of landfills and avoid spending money when it is often completely unnecessary.

So... that's where my Kenmore sewing machine comes in to play. I sent out a "Want" email and got a quick response. A lady was moving out of her apartment, had never used the machine (and had also received it via Freecycle) and was ecstatic that it was one less thing she had to move. And a bonus for me: it is built into a table... which was the entire reason I joined the group in the first place!

Table and functioning sewing machine, check and check.

Until I broke that one too. I am really not that destructive, I promise! The machine obviously hadn't been used for many, many years and maybe never repaired. You will see from the pictures of attachments and the piece of test fabric, that everything has been left untouched for a long time. The rubber belt that connects to the motor finally snapped after a few days of use. Although it will only cost about $15 to replace it, I am still out of the sewing mode until the end of the week.

The moral of this story? Look into Freecycle and don't trust me with machinery! But do look at these cool pictures of my nifty Kenmore machine.