The Needle Threader – Whodathunkit? {Novumber #3}

So, here we are, trolling through the little suitcase of attachments Damiel pitched up with …

Today we look through the round window and find …

The Needle Threader

If you are an experienced stitcher please avert your eyes now, as this might seem like it’s from the department of the bleeding obvious, but hang on just a mo … this was heaven for me …


Now, Damiel, being a tad old-fashioned, threads from left to right … not front to back like modern thangs … so I have to use the threader from right to left …

you just stick the threader through the eye … stick your thread through the blurry big diamond shaped hole …
	… and pull the thread through …
Voila! How brilliant is that?
	Especially for people like me, who seem to be totally needle blind after 6pm!

okay, clever people, you can come back now …

I'll announce the winner of my Frosty Morning in Brighton 

Blogtoberfest giveaway later on today :)

Let’s Cut to the Chase Chaps {Novumber #2}

Yesterday, while we were identifying all those machine bones, my mind wandered to thoughts fantasies of efficient cutting.

There was nothing for it.  I took the icy plunge and forked out more pounds sterling for yet another rotary cutter – I’ve posted before about how pants I am at cutting.  

Turns out it was my bloomin chocolate teapot of a rotary cutter to blame, not my inability to learn a new skill, after all.


Who Knew? 

Once I had my new sultry little vixen Olfa to compare it to, I realised that the blade and screw/washer combo simply didn’t match up.  It was a dud.


This explains precisely why the blade never cut anything properly, no matter what I shoved at it, other than my longest fingernail (and even then I had to finish it off with nail clippers). 


All that angst I could have been chanelling elsewhere!


Now I glide across my fabric like a champion figure skater and am learning not to be so bitter that (despite what feels like a million entries) I have not yet won an Accuquilt Go! 


Yay! Things are looking up!  That’s two things on my Novumber list already showing a sliver of improvement.

… anyway, enough of all that !

-  check out this nerdy chocolate! - 

- click pic for more yumminess -  (in the US)

Sewing Machine Archaeology {Novumber #1}

Blogtoberfest was not just a fantastic way to connect with new people and ideas, but also a really good sandpit for my blogging skills.  I even wonder if my sewing is improving by osmosis from all that creativity out there! if  only


I don’t know if I’ll keep posting every day, but I am going to try and follow my own single-portion-fest of focused, bread-and-butter technical skill improvement, hence, Novum-ber!

Novumber is all about:

- experimenting with Damiel’s attachments

–  hacking gliding through fabric along a straight edge – hopefully massively increasing chance of me actually cutting a whole quilt in less than 3 months!

- sewing in a perfectly straight line while remembering to have enough thread in the full bobbin

… and other such grown up things to be listed another day…

 Okay – So let’s start with this little lot!

I can’t work out what these bits and bobs that came with Damiel are for … So, I went to the very friendly ladies at the Brighton Sewing Centre and spilled them out on a cutting mat for identification – it was like trying to identify some long extinct beast from its tail bone!

As you’ll see, some pieces must have belonged to some other mythical sewing machine dinosaur, as Damiel is, of course, debonair and tall of shank.  I love how we keep and group things that don’t actually work, but look like they should!

from left to right (you’ll be impressed by my technical language here)

• foldy and sewy thing for binding
  
• general foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• lifesaving 1/4 to 1/2 inch guide
  
• very complicated needle threader
  
• 2 extension pieces (don’t fit)
  
• straight stitch foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• extension piece for guide
  
• extension piece for guide
  
• zigzag foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• another fabric guidey thing
  
• zipper foot (does fit!)
  
• button foot – like I’m going to use that given my cack-handedness

So, thank you, lovely Brighton Sewing Centre ladies – at least I know what won’t work now, so I can stop trying to force them on like one of the ugly step-sisters!



Do you have a sewing machine ‘bone’ you need to identify?  Why not upload a picture to my new archaeology of sewing machines flickr group and see if anyone can help?