Today I painted a good friend of mine, my sewing machine.
I love to sew and make things. I only really learned how about 11 years ago. Before that, I had kind of tinkered around, but I had never really finished a successful pattern. Before I had my darling dearest machine, I had a perfectly adequate one that my Bubbe had given me for my birthday one year. I still have her in fact. My daughters have inherited her and they’ve named her Edna. We love her, but she is like a persnickety old woman, she gets grumpy if there are any odd strings or if your fabric enters the machine at just the wrong angle. I actually thought she was dead to the world after I tried to sew sticky Velcro and six layers of interfacing and piping together. So much so that I went out and bought this new machine. After I understood more about sewing machines and Edna’s true nature I was able to resurrect her.
This sewing machine here though, she’s not persnickety. She’s my little helper. She gets grumpy sometimes, but now that I know how to take care of her, we get along so well! The store where we bought her offers free classes on how to use and care for her. My kids were little babies at the time and I didn’t really have time to take the class right when I bought her.
About a year into my owning her, my machine started acting up. I took her in and the people at the shop gave me some dirty looks. Seems I wasn’t taking proper care of my machine! I signed up for the class right away. It was one of the first times after having kids that I had a night out to myself, which was pretty great in and of itself. I learned a lot in the class though. Like that this baby hates a certain type of thread! I learned how to clean her and take care of her. I won’t say that we have never had a problem since, but I will say that I have worked with her enough to know certain measures to take to solve most problems.
I love her cute happy red buttons. I love that I have a myriad of feet to use for all kinds of projects. I love the happy sound she makes as she purrs along while I am sewing. I know that this makes me crazy, but I don’t care. I love my sewing machine.