It's Raining, It's Pouring...

...and it certainly would be easy to be snoring. But instead, I've been doing a bit of sewing.

It's raining, it's pouring!
Suzanne's doing some sewing!

My friend, Abi, posted this tutorial last year, showing how to repurpose pillow cases into shopping totes. I thought it was a wonderful idea! I tried one right away, as you may remember from this post, last May. I gave it away promptly, and continued to look for vintage pillow cases on thrift store trips, but just never got around to sewing any more.

Part of the reason for not sewing was that I haven't been very enamored of my current machine. Flash back to two weeks ago... Hubby and I were rained out of the garden and decided to make the best of it by thrifting our way to the boys' chorus rehearsal. We were getting ready to leave one of our favorite stores when I spied this on a rack behind me:

Price tag: $7.50

Yes, that's seven dollars and fifty cents! No fake! I couldn't believe it.

Let me divert to a slightly different topic here for a moment. The topic is relativity. After shopping in mostly thrift stores for years, $7.50 seems like a hefty price. I actually stood there... considering, cogitating, contemplating. We rarely spend more than $2 or $3 on any single item in a thrift store. $7.50 seemed like so much at the time. This kind of relativity is a good exercise for the mind. Thinking this way, I believe, is a good habit to establish. There is so much excess in our country.

So I started examining the machine. I am familiar with the maker, Janome, enough to know that it has a good reputation. I lifted off the case (not pictured here) and moved the fly wheel, operated levers and switches, examined the bobbin and looked underneath the machine. There was no power cord and foot pedal, so I asked the sales clerk if there were any missing cords laying around. She said there weren't, so I looked around in the electronics part of the store and on the shelves nearby, coming up empty.

Finally, with Hubby's encouragement, I decided to get the machine. The clerk said I could return it in a week if it didn't work. So I got busy, found a foot pedal and power cord for about $50, had a nearby Amishman look at it, and downloaded an instruction manual. All that took about a week. Then I started playing.

Back when I first started sewing seriously, my last year of college, about 25 years ago (oops... I'm dating myself here... a quarter of a century???? Crap I'm getting old...) I bought an old Singer sewing machine from the University. They were having a sale of old equipment and this machine was from the 50s. It had a cast iron head, painted black, and was mounted in a solid wood cabinet with drawers, for $20.


A beauty. I bought that machine, took it home, and promptly went to the university library, where I found an old book that explained how to take the machine apart and oil and lube the parts, check the motor brushes and generally care for the machine. I took that book to a copy shop and made myself a notebook. Then I got busy and fixed that machine right up. I bought attachments for it and used it like crazy for years... about eight years, to be exact. I sewed all of my clothes for work on it, business suits with interfacing, pad-stitching, lining, and welt pockets. It was a great machine, and I really learned a lot using it.

During my professional, working-girl days, I eventually splurged on a new, expensive machine. And it was a nice machine, with some modern conveniences, that served me quite well. But I couldn't maintenance that machine. It had all these access panels that would only open with special tools and I would have had to break the machine to service it myself. I got a lot of use out of that machine, but I hated having to take it in to the dealer and pay $50 to $100 every time I wanted to clean the lint out, oil it, and adjust the tension mechanism. Especially once we moved out to the country. I didn't want to have to drive 50 to 80 miles to pay that kind of money for something I should be able to do myself.

So, about four years ago, I sold that machine on eBay, and for a good price, I might add. With the proceeds we bought a decent mechanical machine with a treadle option, which appealed to me, because I could operate it without electricity if needs be. But I've never really gotten the hang of that machine. And I found myself not wanting to use it that much. I'm a busy person, so this didn't bother me that much. And yet... there remained a nagging sort of hankering in the back of my mind. A hankering to sew.

Now, back to my story. I'll bet you didn't plan on getting a sewing machine history and maintenance lesson, did you?

The Singer has been out of my life for awhile, but the knowledge of sewing machine construction and maintenance stuck with me. So, I recognized that this Janome has all-metal parts, and that the user can maintenance the machine herself. So many modern machines are computerized, and have those funny panels and tools I mentioned earlier. I was delighted that I could simply and easily see under the machine and watch all the moving parts in action as I rotated the fly wheel!

My Janome is mechanical, and the manual even shows how to maintenance the machine! So I did exactly that. I delinted that puppy and wiped it down, oiled the moving parts, and set it up for sewing. The rest, as they say, is history. This is the best machine I've ever had. I love sewing on it, and I have been thinking about it every day for the last week. Thank you, thrift store Goddess, for shining a light on me two weeks ago. I am so grateful!

A good project to test out a new machine is Abi's pillow case shopping tote. Once I did a bag:


I just kept pulling out my pillow cases. And then I started changing things up.



I did a different strap...



dug into my stash of vintage trims,



and have been having a ball.



Thanks, Abi, for the inspiration.

It's been one of the rainiest springs on record here in our part of Ohio, and there is more on the way over the next three days. There are puddles in the garden, and it's hard to plant certain things. So, I'll continue to sew, off and on. There is a time and place for everything, and the time for me right now is one in which to sew.

I have not forgotten about "A" is for Alley Cropping, so please stay tuned. If there's one thing I've learned from blogging, it's that I never know exactly where my entries are headed. I just start with an idea and my posts take on a life of their own. This means you, dear reader, never know what you may find when you drop in here. Thanks, as always, for stopping by.

A Vintage Solution -or- My Bright Idea!

Hello... just a quick post here this cold evening. Every now and then things just click and a problem is solved in a clever way and it tickles me. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy, I suppose. But I think this idea is super clever, and I want to share it with you.

Not too long ago, I thought it would be very handy to have a bunch of scoops that could live in all my buckets of grains and beans. Every now and then I forget, and leave a measuring cup in one of my buckets, or I have to wash and dry the cup before moving it from one bin to the next. So I started looking for old measuring cups at thrift stores. Not being a huge fan of plastic or aluminum, my choices were limited.

Just about ready to give up, last week I walked through the kitchen goods at the thrift store and saw this...


These are Corelle tea cups from an old set of dishes. They aren't very conveniently shaped for drinking hot beverages, nor or they very large. But they ARE very conveniently shaped scoops, with a very comfortable and ergonomic handle! Aha! They cost just 25 cents a piece, and are made of Corning's patented glass, practically break-proof! No plastic, no aluminum, perfect shape! Bingo. I spent two dollars and took a stack of eight home with me.



Once I washed them and started placing them in my various bins of grains and beans, it occurred to me that they seem pretty close to a one-cup measure. I got out my one-cup measure and filled it with water, then poured the water into a Corelle cup. Guess what? Exactly one cup! Even better! Now I have eight new one-cup scoops that fit all my requirements... for a two dollar investment.

Maybe you will want to look for some the next time you are at your favorite thrift store!

Good Times

Good Monday morning to all!

I want to begin by saying that the last four days have been diverse and interesting and busy! It all started last Thursday, with a garage sale Hubby and I managed to hit prior to 9am after dropping the kids at school. Fellow fabric fanatics, I lucked out. Seriously. Lucked. Out.

I was poking around in a table of stuff and saw a box of brand new, still in original packaging, fat quarters. Fat quarters are 18" x 22" pieces of 100% cotton prints that people purchase for quilting projects. They are bundled in coordinating colorways to make it easy on the quilter. They call out to us in the fabric stores, "Here! Buy us! You won't have to think about picking colors on your own!" Being terminally low on cash, and having collected a fair shake of fabric remnants and leftovers from a variety of sources and sales over the years, I, personally, have never bought fat quarters in my life. They are a thing of beauty, wondrous to behold in their crisp neatness, all tucked in together, wrapped up with ribbon.


Well, this box had packages of three fat quarters and the garage sale lady wanted 75 cents each for them. I did a quick scan in the box, wondering what she would take for the whole thing. I thought about offering her $10, thinking she'd never take a price that low. Finally I just decided to ask her what she'd take for the entire box. She said, "How about $7.50?" "Sold," said I, tucking the box under my arm.

Over the weekend, I had a chance to open them all up, lay them out on my sewing table, mix and match, sigh and admire, all the while cogitating project ideas. There are 110 total pieces of fabric. I still can't believe my good fortune!


In other sewing news, I had a chance to try Abi's Vintage Pillowcase Grocery Tote Tutorial and made a bag on Saturday. Thanks, Abi, for such a great tutorial! I encourage all of you to try it. I'm already planning on making a pile of them for Christmas gifts this year. It really was quick and easy, with great results. Since it turned out so well, I decided to take the pile of newborn baby clothes I've been saving and tuck them inside for the mother-to-be's shower gift. Not only will she get a pile of adorable clothes for her newborn, she'll get to keep the packaging for use in the grocery store.


On Mother's Day, the guys took me shopping at a great thrift store and I found a few more treasures, including another pillow case for 25 cents. It was a beautiful day for a drive, I got to knit in the car (coming up with a new design!), and I scored a vintage Pyrex refrigerator container in near perfect condition --and it's yellow-- and a porcelain coffee pot complete with filter.




Now it's Monday, and there is way too much to do in the garden, but that's okay. I'm rejuvenated and inspired by the last several days. I hope you all had a fabulous Mother's Day, be you mother, daughter, father, or son, spending it with your family doing what you love to do. I'd love to linger, but there are onions to weed, compost to spread, and beds to mulch, so for now, I'm off to my tasks at hand...