Can I keep her mum?? Pleeeease?

Another vintage sewing machine followed me home this week. I think this is starting to get out of hand...

I give them loving homes. I care for them, I dust and protect them, I use them so they feel they have a purpose in life. What else could one do for a lonely, neglected vintage sewing machine??

Here is the new addition to the vintage sewing machine family. A Singer model 190. But the bizarre thing is that I can't find any reference to that model Singer anywhere on the net! Can anyone help me out here? Do you own a Singer 190 or know someone who does? She didn't come with any instruction manuals or attachments, what you see is what you get. She is a zig zag machine. That's all I know. She works and looks pretty. Bonus.

I have also finished a lap top cover for a good friend who has waited very patiently for her order to be filled. Customer choice of fabrics and I must say I love the combo of fabrics. The colours go so well together! This bag is much like my library bags but with a zipper. I sourced this gorgeous fabric from the ever gorgeous and helpful Sarah at Quilt Fabric Delights. Outer fabric is Garden Party by Free Spirit and the lining is Kokka Animal Faces Pink Red Blue on Cream.

How many is enough?

I know it is only physically possible to use one sewing machine at any one time, but a girl should have a good few sewing machines in her collection shouldn't she? I already own three....

Yesterday morning's garage sale jaunt turned up a sewing machine of a make I had not heard of before. Necchi. Italian made, this beauty just begged me to bring her home. How could I say no? Made in the fifties, this Necchi Automatic Supernova (what a name!) is one very heavy machine and is in pristine condition. She comes with an amazing accessory box with many feet and attachments and a set of cams to enable you to stitch 270 different decorative stitches.

The amazing lid on the accessory box has a selector dial incorporated into the lid, and shows you which cams to select and the different settings to choose on the machine, just with a quick turn of the dial. I've never seen anything like it.

At the bargain basement price of $20 I feel that this is a machine that will live in the studio for some time. Below are some snaps from the three handbooks that come with this gem. Gorgeous fifties illustrations. Just my thang!

35 is the new black

I participated in a Vintage Swap organised by the lovely Crafty Librarian. She used SwapBot which is a whizz bang online doo-dad for organizing swaps. I received this lovely package of vintage rick rack, bias and buttons all the way from the USA.

Now loyal readers don't, as I did in a recent blonde moment, have a 'oh my golly gosh, I haven't cleared out my bobbin section and now it's blocked to buggery' moment when my trusty sewing machine stopped working.

I got the screwdriver out, used a dry paintbrush and dusted out all the fluff, fibres and thread that had accumulated in and around the bobbin case over the last six months. Feeling very virtuous, I took above photo as a wise warning to those of you who, like me, had forgotten that you need to do this very speedy and easy maintenance on your machine. All that fluff on the right was in there clogging up all the workings.

Don't then, as I did, turn your machine back on and then swear (out of kiddie hearing distance of course) because your machine still isn't working. Then swear some more and slap your own forehead when you realise that all along it was just the bobbin winding lever was switched over to stop the needle going up and down..............................

hmmm.....

It's also a week of celebration in our house. Yes, a week, not a day, of celebrations for my birthday. I'm very happy to be 35 today and quite bemusingly see it as the downhill slide to 40. After the novelty of today has worn off, I'll feel quite happy to be 35 and not see 40 as the end of the world. But just for today, it's boggling my brain cells.

Got the hubby to snap a birthday portrait last night on the kitchen floor, in the style of her majesty. Doesn't the queen sit on the kitchen floor too for her birthday portrait??

We had a lovely dinner last night with the family and enjoyed a gorgeous lamb roast, roast veggies and chocolate raspberry brownies with icecream for dessert. Here's a tip. If you like chocolate raspberry brownies, make them with almond meal instead of flour. They'll stay gooey and runny in the middle and the result is divine. I might share my recipe for that in another post.

After dinner my fluffy sidekick Ella was posing just like the queen's corgies must for all those magazine shoots. Here's some official canine portraits I snapped last night.

I designed today's menu weeks ago. Is it bad to organise one's birthday around the meals?? Pancakes, maple syrup and icecream for breakfast. Left over gooey choc and raspberry brownies for morning tea. Yum cha for lunch. Haighs choclates for afternoon tea. Thai prawn and basil stirfry and champange for dinner, and decadent chocolate pudding for dessert.
I want to turn 35 every day....

Home for lost sewing machines

I seem to have a knack for finding lost dogs and homeless sewing machines.

Visiting the op shop on Friday, I was leaving with my purchases, when outside the front door I spotted a old case someone had dropped off outside. Thinking it was a old typewriter, I got excited and opened the cover. Of course, it was an old Husqvarna Zig Zag class 20 sewing machine. I popped my head back into the op shop and told the lady in there it was out there, attempting to pass it to her. She asked me if I wanted the machine, as they don't accept electrical goods.

And of course I said yes. How could I leave a poor abandoned 1950's sewing machine to sit out in the cold and perhaps be thrown in the bin???

She runs. Quite nicely but there is a catch. The needle doesn't go up and down. Dang.

Complete with most of the attachments and the instruction book, she's a ripper of a find. Now.... what to do with her....