Yin & Yang

Here in the Pings Household (which in reality is just me and my multiple personalities) we are experiencing severe sewing machine trauma. 

Poor Damiel.





He’s like an eccentric old spitfire … he’s got all the parts you need to fly, and all the enthusiasm and intention of a teenager, but none of the modern technology to make the flight smooth and zippy like a jet fighter …

Johnny Depp would play him in the movie.  I do really love him.  He’s shiny.

Anyway.  My obsessive use of the walking foot in my quest for perfect HSTs and paper piecing is starting to take its toll on his 63 year old frame.




Piecing this, (left) only my second (of 16!) spiderweb blocks for the Brit Quilt Swap …





… has seen 2 broken needles, a locked bobbin. motor flipping the wheel lock off, and general spinning out with associated clunking.

To this 1950s boy racer of a machine, a walking foot is the equivalent of sticking a memory stick into a typewriter.

He’s wearing out and needs a break. 



So, I think I’m going to bring back Mrs Singer again … (She’d be played by Patricia Routledge)

She’s been on ‘sabbatical’. (snitty tension issues) 

I sympathise with her, really I do. 




 But she’s Yin to his Yang, Man.  It’s her turn.


 In other news …

I have got a wonderful double bubble giveaway starting next week …

Let’s see now, Melody Miller, Interview, Fabric …

… Spoilers!

Reunited (and it feels so good)

It’s official! Damiel (my lovely 1958 boy-racer Novum) and I are an item again.  Just in time for Valentine’s Day.
 
He’s been in for a bit of a tune-up (new pedal) and now, the nightmare that was New Year’s Eve is a mere Bobby Ewing false memory.
 
Now, I’m not sure he’ll be terribly happy about me having absolute speed control (from throaty crawl to full-on Grand Prix pedal to the metal) but I am delirious.  I’ve never been able to sew slowly with him, so we need some time to get re-acquainted.

1.1.11 Pedal to the Metal

Happy 2011 chaps!  I trust you had a suitably riotous time/civilised sip of champagne/nice cuppa tea and a biscuit* 
*delete where applicable 

I had a quite extraordinary New Year’s Eve.

I did a little socialising earlier in the day, but as my year had been far from meriting reflection, I decided to bow out of any mad revelry this year.  

So, I cooked a fab roast lamb, parsnip and red cabbage supper (bliss of lunh today too!) popped some fizz (Lynne over at Lily’s Quilts says her Dad calls it Fizziotherapy!)  and then settled into a relaxing time cutting & sewing a quilt for me. spent a couple of hours with a screwdriver and an increasing feeling of desperation.

10.00 pm - Damiel my beloved Novum flipped out on me - pedal to the metal with NO FOOT ON THE PEDAL!  Yup, the treadle finally gave way (after c. 62 years of action, granted) and was just stuck on GO.




Sheesh!  I’m telling you, it was scary.  He’s noisy at the best of times, being entirely metal, but this was wild!  So, I unplugged him, unscrewed the treadle, farted about a bit, put it back together and … 

11.00 pm … still stuck on GO. When the lights started to flicker in my sitting room I thought “Uh-oh … what if I were about to blow the whole street out?”  Not a good move for neighbourly love on New Year’s Eve, you’ll agree. It was like a quilter’s version of the movie Speed.

Well, I tell you, I was buggered if I was going to see in 2011 with no bloomin sewing machine, so I hauled Mrs Singer (she’s a bit of a mumsy 1970s affair) in from the hall, where she was just two steps away from being freecycled - some months ago the presser foot lever just fell out and I was quoted silly money to mend her, hence the acquisition of Damiel in the first place.



Determined not to be beaten, I took the whole front gubbins off and eventually found a little lost screw …

11.30 pm … fingers, machine and face smeared in machine grease I finally worked it out!  I refitted the lever! 
 Yay!

11.55 pm I tuned into the radio, ready to hear Big Ben chiming in the New Year.  I threaded her up.  She spluttered into action a tad grumpily but sewed like a dream!  (It might well be the dream of a slightly deranged menopausal woman, but hey, she’s a lot quieter than the boy racer) …

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!

 

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!

Happy New Year!

The moral of this tale:   Never give up on old friends - sometimes they come back into your life when you least expect it and fill your day with joy!

Mrs S and I are going to settle down with a nice cuppa celebrate with some Fizziotherapy and get re-acquainted while I sew my Quilt of Good Intentions.

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 :)

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?

mmmmmm … Velcro

 

 

Last night as I was scrabbling around in my seemingly bottomless bag, for usb memory sticks, connecting leads and pens, etc. I thought ENOUGH!  So I pulled out a few scraps and made two little pouches in super quick time about two hours, truth be told!

 

 

 

 

The larger one is for pens pencils and work memory sticks, the smaller for my ipod shuffle, headphones & bloggy/images memory stick.

 

I also found a couple of perfectly sized zips – but after the pressing and lining of the second bag – (the big boy is unlined )– could I find the zips I’d laid out?  Could I?  Nah.  Nowhere.  (Still can’t find em a day later after tidying up!)

 

 

Ripple dissolve to 45 angst ridden and frustrated minutes later – Velcro to the rescue!

 

 

If you look closely (please don’t!) you’ll see that the bigger bag has some really dodgy stitching on it, where the delightful Damiel decided to keep locking his little belt drive on me, causing havoc with the tension (solved only by threatening him with a hefty screwdriver). 

 

 

That’s why there’s the little tag sewn on the back of each bag – to enhance my Velcro moment and to put as little stress on the sewing as possible!  

 

 

Let’s not even talk about the hole I gouged with my seam ripper! I also used my ‘London Drizzle’ variegated greys quilting thread, which doesn’t add to the whole look either.

 

 

But hey! I don’t mind. 

They’re not for gifts they’re for ME!

 

 

And you know what?  I love the Velcro.  I opened those bags about 20 times more than I needed to today.  Every time a student was a little bit slow or too Monday sleepy, instead of barking at them I just ripped at the Velcro.  Bliss!  Monday was fun!

Slippery Under Foot {Blogtoberfest #4}

 
I’ve been going through a little crisis and I’m going to share
Just lately it seems frustration and self-doubt have been snapping at my heels every step of the way.
Now, to briefly recap - I started sewing again when my brother was in hospital (you can read about that here) and I made my first quilt(s) as a direct result of that. That was all hand-sewing and I hadn’t actually sat in front of my machine for about 10 years, when I used to make cushions out of my Brighton prints.  

I’d been totally bitten by the bug, with huge ideas but very little actual technique or practice under my belt.

Just as I got into the swing a bit Mrs Singer died and the Dashing Damiel replaced her.  

Now, Damiel  is a TerryThomas-top-down-sports-car kind of a chap, and being a cad-racer, speed control is not in his dictionary.  His foot’s flat to the floor or he’s kerb-crawling and quite literally making one stitch at a time … there is no ‘cruise control’.


That, combined with the fact that he’s all shiny metal (so, quite literally, slippery under foot) and has no measurement markings on the plate, means that controlling my fabric has been a real issue.  

Meep! 

The younger me would have just given up at this stage and parked Damiel firmly in the garage, taken up my hand sewing again and lived with the disappointment of never trying things like this:

beautiful coins quilt from Millies Quilting

inspiring paintbox from Elizabeth Hartman @ Oh, Fransson!

The older me, I've discovered, is a tad more willing to learn and try again.  

So, I set off for the reference library went to youtube and found a whole heap of really useful videos showing me how to sew the perfect straight seam.

Yes, lovely – but all these talented ladies use machines younger than 40 years old & with some kind of speed control.

Then I watched a vid about using tape on the plate to mark your border – mmmm, nice.  

I ignored that (remember - no markings on my plate to highlight) and went to delve into the bag of goodies that Damiel arrived with.

Aha!  And that is when I found this:

My Hero – fixable at 1/4” & 1/2” positions – Melt!

So now I can sew seams any 1940s dame with an eyebrow pencil would be proud of …

Look!

and my new mantra is:

Anything is possible, with a little dogged determination.

The journey may take a little longer sometimes, but the final destination is even sweeter.

 Never Give Up!

Have you got a similar story of sheer bloody-mindedness triumphing over repeated failure? 

Do tell!

.... Don't forget to pop and see who else is Blogtoberfest-ing.

Out with the Old --- In with the Even Older!

<---Before we get stuck in, let's just draw a veil over Mrs 1975 Singer's recent behaviour, shall we?  -  suffice to say, she's in disgrace and has been sent to a rehab clinic to recover from getting her levers in a twist ... I may end up having to commit her permanently ...

Today I fell in love .... (thanks to freecycle!) 

 D'you want a sneaky peek at his rippling torso? 

 Swoon!

 

Here he is in all his glory -  an early 60s Japan-made Novum Deluxe Zig Zag Mark IX - 

You should hear the motor - it just purrs, and the sewing action is like a knife through butter ... and so responsive on the treadle ... 

Like a 60s Trabant!  Maybe not beautiful, but oh so reliable ...

 

.... or a "Dauntless" WWII bomber ?

 

 He shall be named 'Damiel', after Bruno Ganz's angel in "Wings of Desire"











Look at that feed dog mechanism ... so .... handsome ....

... and he brought gifts too, look: 

 I have to go now .... 

... Damiel and I have some catching up to do ...