The days have been very full. When I'm not hanging out with family, I'm busy cutting up fabric and reassembling it into more quilts to finish. I finished the Maxine quilt yesterday, and it's a real load off my list. I have a new quilt on my new design board and I am going to begin to hand sew the binding on another baby quilt tonight. I feel like I'm starting to gain some ground (two down, 5 or 6 to go). When I started all this two years ago this spring, I promised myself I wouldn't be the woman with a gazillion unfinished quilt tops (oops), so it's time to fall back and regroup. I love when I can get into a busy sewing mode...I feel like some wild little terrier, zooming around in my own little whirlwind and once in a while poof! something pops out of the whirlwind. Very cool. (If only housecleaning was so much fun.)
Last week I decided to take my sister's sewing machine in and have it cleaned and tuned up. She brought it to me last November, the day she came to meet the new baby. I knew, in my heart, that she knew she was dying and wanted me to have it before then. It has been sitting here since, waiting for some of the sadness to clear before I could pay attention to it. Now I can hardly wait to sew on it.
The sewing machine man just loved it. It's a Singer 301 and was made sometime between 1950-1953, most likely. It's the first slant needle machine made, to my understanding. Like many of those old Singers, this machine, which sews only a straight stitch, is a real workhorse and can probably tackle as much as my new Juki (without the speed factor). In other words, many of those old machines are pretty much equivalent to the newer home "industrial" machines. Treasures if you have them or can find them.
