This morning there was blue sky and sunshine after weeks of grey and clouds so today was the day to bring my sewing machine in for some look-see. After millions of miles of sewing/quilting, a long period of no-use, and then some quite successful clothes sewing this past fall, I went in one day to do a quick repair and it said – NO. It pretended like maybe it would consent to sew and then no.

So after a few possible trips that were put aside for iffy weather, Mom and I set off to Gloversville Sewing Center so my trusty machine could get looked at. I am hopeful that it will be a belt or something easily fixed but I’ve had this machine since January 1994 and rode it hard. I did dutifully clean and oil it during all those years but I get it being tired and cranky now. Will wait and see what the report is.

I am not morally opposed to getting a new sewing machine but I didn’t really want the couple dozen embroidery stitches on this machine, so I don’t get the selling point of 150 embroidery stitches. I want straight stitching, basic zig-zag, maybe a couple edge-finishing options and droppable feet for easy free-handing. I don’t think that’s asking a lot. When I was doing a lot of machine quilting, I would sometimes put a strip of masking tape over the two adjustment knobs on the front, to prevent them getting bumped and getting me into zigzag mode accidentally. Now all the machines have large touch screens on the horizontal part, with lots of screens to go through to make your choices… (eyeball roll here)

And of course since we were there, we had to look at all the fabric. She found some fun stuff. I found a couple things which may get used for like a vest lining or something: