Friday, March 13, 2015

Where did February go?

15March13cats The real reason I haven’t done a lot of sewing lately.

That’s not true, but Rusty gets blamed for everything. He doesn’t seem to mind. I was mending the holy pockets in my winter coat yesterday and he plopped himself down on my coat and went to sleep.

Don’t you hate it when your keys go missing and you locate them in the lining of your coat? Or your cell phone starts ringing and you have to take your coat off and practically turn it inside out to get your phone back? Hopefully my mending will stop that from happening again.

15March13bags Actually, I’ve been getting a lot of sewing done.It’s just been taking me 10 times longer than it normally does because I’ve been having non-stop problems with the tension. I’ve been spending more time taking stitches out than I have putting them in. I spent hours slowly turning the tension dial back and forth, I changed needles, thread, etc.Once I changed a bobbin and it cleared up for a little while – until I had to take the bobbin out to refill it. I put it back into the machine and all of the problems were back.

Just in the past two weeks they’ve disappeared again and everything is working better than it has since I busted my needle plate about this time last year. That’s when the tension problems started. Maybe the planets have realigned and harmony has replaced tension in the sewing room!

15March13handles I just finished these three bags. I started four of them just over a year ago, cutting all of the fabric I needed to make them. In fact, it was the first of these bags that I was working on when the needle mechanism came down on the needle plate like a jackhammer. I was stitching the canvas handles at the time. Even after I replaced the needle plate, I was hesitant to try it all again, which is one reason why it’s taken me so long to finish these. I just have to stitch up the lining opening and I’m done. They’re a nice and roomy heavy duty tote bag. We’ll see if I can sell them when our farmers market starts up again in May.

Until next time,