On my Facebook page I put "sewing" as one of my activities/interests. That is something I never thought would happen. And I'm still a pretty bad sewer, but the category is, after all, "sewing" and not "good sewing." I guess it began out of necessity. I am much too cheap to buy curtains, and they are pretty much just straight(ish) lines--pretty simple. I've been known to make slipcovers for pillows as well. That's about my speed.
Well I have tried things of more difficulty, which I can never accurately describe the ridiculousness of. Like the dress I tried to make. It had a drop waist with a gathered skirt, not so elementary. As for the facing, well I didn't know what that was, so I just sort of tried to "hem" around the neck. Somehow I managed to pick a pattern 3 sizes too big for me. The fabric was purple with a floral calico print. Okay, not to be stereotypical, but I looked like an old mountain woman in it. It fit literally like a very large potato sack. It was worth all the time and money spent just to laugh that hard.
When we bought a little cottage up in Michigan I lugged my trusty sewing machine up there to make the necessary curtains & pillow slipcovers. I liked my machine pretty well. It was just a $100 model I had bought at Target, or I think it was Venture then. Nothing fancy--I just need a straight stitch, and zig-zag if I'm feeling really crazy. But this was back a few years before stuff was made with plastic gears & such. It actually worked pretty well. But horror of horrors, in transit I dropped the foot pedal, and it broke.
My husband fixed it, sort of, but it still wasn't quite right. I should have just gone on the internet and found one on e-bay, but in a momentary lapse of judgment, I decided to take it to my dad. Now I had a seemingly good reason for this: My dad has a small manufacturing company and one of the things I knew he had produced was an industrial foot pedal. So I figured he might be able to do the repair quickly and easily.
I love my dad very much, and he is brilliant, but I could have told myself that I never should have left that machine in his hands. Because I would never see it again. He tried to fix it, but couldn't, so he decided to build me a whole new foot pedal. Cool, but in the mean time I had found a place where I could just buy one for $40. What? Didn't I want the super-industrial-one-of-a-kind-shiny, metal ($150) beast my dad was already working on?? Of course I did! Well, I never did see that magnificent foot pedal. It didn't work with my machine.
I am confident that eventually my dad could have got the thing to work. Only he has, as I said, a company to run and plenty of other fires to put out, projects, problems, etc. From time to time I would ask about my sewing machine. I don't remember what he said but the writing on the wall was getting clearer. Time ticked by and I discovered products like "stitch witchery" with which you can glue up curtain hems and the like. I tried not to be upset, but I was. Then, without my knowledge, my dad moved his business. I knew they would have to have thrown away as much junk as possible. My sewing machine had been sitting there for at least a year, probably much longer. I assumed it had gone in the dumpster.
Okay, this really is getting "sewwww long," so I will finish with a sequel. Peace out.
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