What I Do Wednesday: Why I Have So Many Machines

A couple years ago, our part of the world was on fire, and when it got within ten miles of our house, I freaked out completely.  Fuzzy, who is experienced in California wildfires, indulged my panic, but assured me that the fire was going to have to act completely unnaturally to get to us.  I continued losing my mind creating a mound of what needed to go into the cars and taking pictures of our stuff for insurance purposes.  These pictures are ridiculous, with mass amounts of clutter in the background, since the fires were happening during a tech week that was at the end of putting together three shows in a row, plus commissions and classes and all that other stuff.  These pictures look like the first fifteen minutes of an episode of Hoarders to me.

Not the point. Anyway.  There are six sewing machines in the pictures.  Six.  It sounds insane until you realize that they each have their own unique purpose, and they're all necessary in their own way.  Pay no attention to everything in the background.  These are the actual pictures from the panic photoshoot.  It's mostly better nowadays.

This is my workhorse.  I bought it on Ebay over ten years ago as an early graduation gift for grad school.  It does just about everything I ask it to do, and I have acquired lots of goodies for it, like an eyelet maker and a ruffler.  It weighs a ton, so I've only taken it out for classes a couple times.  Moving it makes my husband roll his eyes in frustration, because it is almost exclusively genuine metal.  They don't make 'em like this anymore, and it shows in the secondary marketplace.

The old serger and the new serger.  I bent the crap out of a really integral piece of the old serger when I was working with very little sleep at one point, and I'm pretty sure it is fixable, so I keep it around, especially since I looooove it.  It was the first big present from Fuzzy, when we were living in a two-room efficiency apartment with a landlord named Monty who drove a gold Cadillac (that tells you all you need to know.).  It has been a trooper, and I owe it a lot, at least buying the couple parts and attempting to make it right.  The new serger came in because I needed to do knitwear fast and it was affordable.  It does a great job, and the balance is amazing.

This is a mid-level machine I picked up from Target after getting our tax refund a few years ago.  Fuzzy was starting to feel guilty about always getting a big Lego set with the refunds each year, so he insisted I pick out something for myself.  This machine is in the arsenal entirely for the one-step buttonhole feature, and it paid for itself when we did 1776.  I probably have done 1500 buttonholes on this thing by now, bless it.

This was a Valentine's Day present from Fuzzy years ago.  He is terrible about presents for the little holidays, and so most of the time, I just let him skip them.  I saw the listing for this on Overstock, though, and suggested this might be a great catch-up gift.  He loved the idea that he could hang out with me without a stack of hems in my lap, so he went for it.  This is a blind-hemmer, by the way, which does a fancy stitch that makes a relatively invisible hem stitch that can be easily pulled out when it's time to change it out.  One place I worked actually used a blind-hemmer to put in petticoat tucks, allowing them to release the tucks in about one minute instead of ages.  I was nervous about using this machine for a long while, but now that I use it, I can't imagine my life without it.

Not pictured:  The travel machine.  I bought a basic Singer for about $150 on Ebay in 2001, when I was in undergrad.  It was a stretch at the time, but I didn't realize I would still be using the machine when it would be old enough to vote.  I need to tune it up a smidge, but it has gone with me to classes, tech rehearsals, and Dickens Fair (I work in the costume shop each year, making life better one emergency repair at a time.).  It lives in a carrying case I acquired from a dead machine I was given that I just couldn't fix.  I wish I had that machine now, because I could probably fix it now.  Alas.

If the sewing person in your life is trying to explain to you that another machine is needed, just let them get it.  Mine have made my sewing life so much easier.  The only machine I'm still eyeing is an embroidery machine, but that is waiting until after other goals are met.  I'll live vicariously through my friends who have such machines.

My oldest sister is currently looking at the titles of the books in the background of the blind-hemmer.