Sewing

Sew,  or rather So....my beloved sewing machine quit last Friday.  I've had it since I was in my 20's (which really wasn't that long ago, even though it was 20 years) and I've sewn so many things with it.  Quilts for boyfriends, receiving blankets for babies, pillowcases, duvet covers, clothes, you name it.

The Girl was given a sewing machine when she was about 11 or 12 and I think she has used it once.  I dug it out of the attic and spent about an hour just trying to get it threaded.  Then I used it for a while and wanted to kill myself.

The Brown eyed Man has gone into full-on sewing machine shopping mode even though he has never used one in his life.  He thinks we need some super industrial thousand dollar thing and I think we need to go more middle of the road, five hundred dollar-ish.

In the meantime, I have borrowed my friend's sewing machine which isn't much better than The Girl's machine and now I have my Mother-in-law's Viking.  It's kick-ass compared to my Singer.  But I do love that Singer.

After two days of tinkering around, the Singer works again but only to sew straight lines.  I rarely do anything but straight lines, but it would be nice to zig-zag once in while, just for fun.  At one point we had four machines on this counter.  We're back down to two.

I think I mentioned previously that I work in his sweatshop.  Seriously.  I sew for days on end and get paid nothing.  That's the glory of being a small business owner.  He makes shotgun cleaning rods and I make the bags they come in.  I hate them.  One or two are fine, but 20 at a time drives me to drinkin.   We're working on finding a sucker source to do them for us.  Cost is the only issue.

The thing is, I like to sew.  I just don't want to sew the same thing over and over and over and over and over.  I want to sew things like this quilt:

See Carolinapatchworks on Flickr

 

This Hudson Bay inspired quilt would be nice too.  My Brother and Sister-in-Law gave us a Hudson Bay blanket for our wedding.  I still haven't taken it out of the package because it's so nice.

I made this apron for the Brown Eyed Man's Step-Grandma last Christmas.  That was actually more fun than I thought.  It only took a couple of hours.

 

I made one of these bags the other day and I have plans to make a few more as gifts but all of those plans have to fall behind the dreaded shotgun cleaning rod bags.

On top of all this sewing, there are other embroidery and crochet projects I would love to start.  But again, I work in a sweatshop and my boss is a nag who won't let me relax for five minutes, let alone start another project.