Meet the Beast

Meet the beast. This is the machine that I learned to sew on as a child and which my mother recently handed down to me. I did not take the machine for all the warm fuzzy memories it embodies. To the contrary, I remember only long tormented hours spent threading, breaking threads and re-threading this monster. My mother insisted I do this myself. Every Time. The top threading was a complete mystery, the path markings having worn away long before my time. My mother's instructions were delivered with New York City abruptness that I found terribly intimidating. And I heard them every time I broke a top thread, gummed up the bobbin or stalled the machine and turning the wheel didn't help. Let's say, every 5 minutes. No, I never got any better at it. After a couple of hours, I would manage to hide away and surreptitiously hand-sew the rest of the job. ANYWAY, I took the thing because I like the case that it folds into. Good wood, perfect height for dumping out the contents of one's pockets and sorting the mail.

Here is the machine I'll be using for Project Linus blankets. There are nice people at the store where I bought it who are happy - or at least do a good job of pretending to be happy - to show me tips and tricks for blanket sewing and how to recover from mistakes without tearing out 3 yards of thread in the process. It comes with a cover and stores easily under its ancestor, The Beast.

And here are some of the fabrics I'm using. I'm not doing the no-sew fleece thing, I'm actually sewing the edges myself. I like the patterns available on the bolts more than I do the prepared no-sew kits, and by the time you've cut the fabric to size it's easier to sew on the NEW machine than it is to do all the cutting the no-sew requires. The teen blankets are about 45" x 72" which is bigger than most of the no-sew kits also.

Thanks for reading my blog!

~ Elizabeth

http://www.becgoteam.com/!