For the past couple of weeks, I had been fighting oil spots on fabric every time I stitched a seam on Janet's old Mitsubishi industrial at the studio and I couldn't figure out why or where they were coming from. (I think all the rubber seals and gaskets are just old and wearing out or something.)
So instead of calling the repair guy and spending $400+ to try to fix it, we decided it was time to upgrade to a Juki DDL-8700 with a quiet servo motor like I have at home. And because I had been planning to eventually get another one for myself to have at the studio anyway, we got two, traded in the Mitsubishi (which covered the delivery charge), and had the guys from Sunny Sewing Machine in Dallas do all the heavy lifting up the studio stairs!
They were delivered yesterday, which was almost exactly four years since I brought my Juki ("Thor" ) home on June 1, 2019 after sewing on the same model at the opera for a few years. It's always interesting to see the tiny changes made from year to year. Thor was made in China, but these two new machines were made in Vietnam. And the ruler printed on the table surface has changed somewhat.
Sadly, that means that Gandalf and his desk came home with me again, but honestly, I prefer sewing on an industrial, especially for work stuff.
I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild
I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild
We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild
Nice slow Saturday moving triangles from one pile to another after voting this morning. I have pumpkin pies to make later for tomorrow's church potluck (Octoberfest/Reformation day celebration).
#epp
Bernadette has a "tips for buying fabric online" vid (and a previous vid on fabric weights from last week) up. The excel sheet she's put up looks useful.
IME - you get what you pay for. Every time I've bought a "bargain" fabric online I have regretted it.
I went drooling online yday and now I feel a need to go to BBlacks&Son in person but I will need a bodyguard. -sigh- They have (or, at least they used to have) a lot of fabrics that don't get on their website. Yummy, historic store... anyway, I digress.
I’m trying to figure out if I should do something to jazz up this very grandpa-looking cardigan I’m currently sewing. Maybe this was the wrong fabric to do a tie front/shawl collar with! But since this fabric came from my last year’s birthday mystery bundle, I want to try to see this through. The options I’ve played with so far are some kind of embellishment from my huge vintage button stash (I think the white ones are too ivory-yellow tone to work, but the darker ones could be interesting if I can figure out a better configuration), or trim (picture 3), or some kind of embroidery or scrap denim flowers or something? (no sample). Or I could take the collar off entirely? I need to figure out the edge finishing either way, because I forgot to cut the facing pieces (thanks Big 4) and I’m piecing together scraps to see what I can come up with. I also had to piece the collar and back it with a piece of jersey because I really did not have enough yardage to make anything useful to ...
