sarah in nyc

This is my beloved sewing machine. I purchased it a few years ago when my Pfaff bit the dust.My go to brilliant sewing machine doctor, leon Speilvogel had moved his repair shop in the garment district, appropriately called "Garment Center Sewing" out to Brooklyn. Getting the machine to Leon was something of a problem which required either an expensive taxi ride or dislocating my funky shoulders from carrying the sewing machine. While I weighed my options I purchased  the inexpensive Janome as a stop gap measure. I ended up falling deeply in love with what was supposed to be a temporary fix. The Janome was in many ways just a better machine than the Pfaff which had cost several times more than the Pfaff.  Over the years several parts broke off. The stopper mechanism for the bobbin winder went early. While I was teaching a class the little tool box crashed to the ground so I hacked together a repair using Velcro. But the machine kept purring along, working as an exte...

So here it is, my new Janome11590. The model number is included for those of you who care about such things. Yes this machine is also sold with a Kenmore nameplate. If you really want to know which Kenmore model number this is, you can visit www.patternreview.com . If you want to buy this very model, I got it at www.overstock.com . I am of mixed mind about the many stitches. On the one hand, many of them are seriously adorable. Many of them are even useful. I just edged a black tallit with the checkerboard stitch in back on black silk. It is truly elegant. I also used the diamond stitch in gold to attach the atara/neckband to the tallit. That is quite elegant. The dark side of these fabulous stitches is that they are a bit distracting. I am afraid that I might end up playing with stitches, rather than actually working. It can end up being the sewing equivalent of seeing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I know that lots of people have machines with many mor...

My older son does karate about three days a week. Once a week he does sparring. Regardless of if he does fighting or not, karate at his Dojo is sweaty business. I have seen workouts where the floor is completely wet from the combined sweat of the participants. My son gives me his gi, or karate uniform, to wash quarterly. I'm not squeamish, but I refuse to touch the gi before it has been cleaned. Last night was wash the gi night. My son mentioned that his gi was torn and needed to be mended. I know, as well as anyone, that " A stitch in time saves nine." or it makes a whole lot of sense to mend before washing, because the agitation of the machine can cause more damage. But in this case, that gi wasn't going to be touched until it was clean. Our usual drill is to run the gi through the wash twice. By the time the gi came out of the wash, the bi-directional tears under the arms were pretty spectacular. I sewed them up but noticed that the the lever that lifts the sewing ...