A Cry for Help
So, I was going to make my neighbor a lovely afghan for her new baby that is due any day now…but I just don’t like the yarn that I ordered. The texture is too….polyester feeling. I’ve waited too long and now the baby will be here before I can even decide what yarn to get.
So… I decided I would make an attempt to sew the blankets like Sister Madness has done. I figure I can knit, I can crochet, I can do counted cross-stitch for crying out loud I should be able to sort out how to use the sewing machine to make lovely even stitches around the squareness of a blanket! Pfft…if I can use a computer I can figure out a sewing machine…
So I pull out the neglected sewing machine
And I get my tools together
And then I pull out the test fabric.
Cuz ya know, I don’t want to practice on the actual fabric and crap it all up…
Well…I get the fabric ready…I’m going to make a dice bag for my D&D dice… not that much harder than a blanket, right? Yah, right…
The machine started up made a few stitches and then came unthreaded. I tear out the few stitches and rethread the machine and try again. Same thing happened. Over and over I can’t get it to go the whole 6 inches across the bottom of the frickin bag.
A call is placed to dear Sister Madness…
“What could I possibly be doing wrong?” I ask.
“Have you threaded the machine properly?”
“It appears I have, I followed their lame diagrams.”
“Is the needle sharp? Is it maybe bent?”
I look at the needle…it appears straight, she talks to someone at her end and in my vast stupidity I poke my finger with the needle…seems sharp to me…ow…
“Yeah, the needle just stabbed me, I think it’s sharp. But I’ve got an extra needle, maybe I should change it anyway?”
“Give it a try.”
So I grab the mini-screwdriver and try to undo the clamp following the directions. It’s very tight I use both hands and watch the needle fall into the opening where the bobbin thread comes out…there’s maybe a fraction of a centimeter of the needle sticking up *sigh* this does not bode well…I use the screwdriver to try to pull the needle out of the hole…it just moves around a bit, until the needle completely falls INTO the hole. It’s gone now. I look at all the screws and how the machine is put together to try to figure out how to get it out.
“You got the needle in yet?” Sis M asks me.
“Uh…the old needle fell into the hole…” I shake the machine to try to figure out where it is. I’m thinking this whole thing is over with now, I can’t put the new needle in without it getting broken on the old one that’s stuck inside.
“Don’t worry, I’ve lost plenty of pins in my machine,” she says.
I feel a little better but I try to shake the needle to the opposite end of the machine anyway. I put in the new needle and all seems well. I thank Sis M and we hang up…she’s at work anyway so I don’t want to keep her.
I try again, thread the needle, get the bobbin going, put in the fabric….and the needle just pokes holes in the fabric now…no stitches are getting made at all… I rethread the machine…redo the bobbin…Look at the lame diagrams… nothing works. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. Does ANYONE in the Chicago area know how to use a frickin sewing machine? I can bring this to you…it’s portable and lightweight…What the hell is wrong with this thing??
The boy comes down asks how things are going. I tell him I can’t sort it out.
“My mom does this kind of sewing,” he says.
“Yeah, but she’s in Texas too…not much help to me down there.”
“Give me a computer or a car engine and I can tell you what’s wrong, but this is out of my league,” says Mr Gadget Boy as he walks away.
Give me yarn and a crochet hook or knitting needles anyday… DMC floss and that special canvas with a book of color coded X’s and I’m ready to create a masterpiece… But this machine stuff…Is there ANYONE who can help me? I got this machine and I’d like to learn how to use it.
UGH…
