Reunited And It Feels So Good

Look at the position of the felt pad in relation to the feed dogs! eek!

Yesterday I was reunited with my old Brother sewing machine after over three years! I’d lent it to my school’s art department when my sewing mojo departed.  As you can see, it was in a filthy dusty filthy rusty filthy state - even the bobbin case was in the wrong position, wedged.  #HoHum 

This was after 1 hr of cleaning, at this point I had to get the WD40 out!

It took about three hours to get him back to good order (pretty near total dismantle job). When I finally got to the point where I could thread the needle and do some practice stitching, features I’d forgotten were so useful started to reveal themselves - the working needle threader, the bobbin action, the needle up/down doopher and, most excitingly the ability to go commando and not use the foot pedal, just push a button and vroom vroom.  

I don’t know why I like this feature so much but I do and I am delighted to have it back in my life.  

Considering this is a pretty low-end machine I’m impressed by the welly under the bonnet in comparison to the cheap Aldi machine I inevitably ended up buying to use in the interim! (I only really bought it to embroider rude words on napkins, which was totally worth it, but seriously, sewing over a dark side seam was like attempting the ascent of K2.)

Brother purrs much more, feels reliable, sews like butter and his stitches are straight!  #Woohoo

They’ve never met before 

He’s now all shiny on a shelf waiting for action.  Not long baby, not long ... 

Hello 2020

Well, hello!  It’s only been eight years since my last post.  I don’t really know what happened to my blogging mojo but I think it just suffered alongside the loss of my entire creative mojo in the last few years.  No dramatic reasons, just foggy mental health and work and health, the usual ...

I haven’t been entirely devoid of creative bursts - I’ve been mini-blogging on Instagram and I’m very happy over there ... But sometimes I want to ramble on a bit more, or explain a process and that’s when the Insta platform feels a little claustrophobic.  So, I thought I’d try an experiment and bring PingsAndNeedles out of retirement. I don’t know how often I’ll be using it or who will read it, but that’s not the point.  It was really only ever for me to have a space to ramble on and document my creative process, so that’s how I intend to continue.  Randomly! I have not spent hours crafting this post because the point is just to begin.

Let’s start with a little item I painted for a friend this Christmas ... and let me tell you the Origins Story:

It all started back here with this Ruby Star Rising and Andover fabrics quilt from 2010!

A few years later it needed a little bit of tlc where the seams were loosening up (prob wrong original tension, I’ve learned a lot since then!) So, having put it into my WIP pile I ignored it for a couple of years (whoops!) and then finally back in 2018 I decided to recycle and revamp the quilt into something new ... (adding more Melody Miller fabric along with some dots and solids, with a mustard tweed backing)

But that left this backing fabric unused .... 

So I used some of it to make make up removal pads (for the same friend)

and then this Christmas at my annual @thepaintingpotterycafe visit I painted this tapas dish which I thought she could put in her bathroom to hold the pads ...

I like the story so far.  

That’s all for now, thank you for reading.

Do any of you have the same kind of theme history behind gifting to people?