Little Martha is Back!

Back in January, my little Bernina 180 (which was previously named "Little Martha" before it got replaced in favor of a bigger, beefier Bernina by the name of "Big Bertha" and passed down to me)had a terrible mishap while I was making what later became known as "The Ugliest Quilt in the World."  In the mean time, I bought another machine, which also suffered a terrible mishap while making napkins for Isabelle's wedding - I'm glad the napkins were well liked because a good machine gave its life to their cause, lol.

But just yesterday Little Martha took a trip with Jack Levin, sewing machine repair guy extraordinaire, to see if she was just a little broken, or completely totalled.  When I called to him and explained the problems Little Martha was having, he said that he'd have a look but it might be time to put the ol' girl out to pasture...and when he came and saw the main issue with the timing, all he could say was "Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch!" It's never good when those words come out of the mouth of a pro.  I let her go with low expectations, because seriously...the timing was royally, royally OFF. I expected to hear back from him today saying that Little Martha officially bit the dust.

This morning I got a message saying that my machine was...FIXED and happy as a clam.  But, after many years experience fixing all manner and quality of machines, never in his whole career (emphasis on "never," I am told) had he seen the timing in a Bernina knocked off a complete 180 degrees. Apparently, that just doesn't happen.  Welllllllll I guess there's a first for everything; as they always say, go big or go home!

But anyway, my borrowed machine can finally go back to its rightful owner, and I can stitch happily with my own machine...and in the mean time, look for a nice back up machine before something else catastrophic happens.  Someone knock on wood!

Here We Go Again: The Tuesday Edition

Technology hates me. Seriously.  While my boyfriend, friends and family have a fair time with their technologies, I have a rap sheet a mile long of mishaps and mysterious breakdowns.  My phone freezes all the time and has umpteen issues, which my Dad who has the same phone just a year older, has no problems.  My tablet doesn't charge unless you tape the charging cord to the table with a piece underneath the plug in to make it higher than the tablet (and maybe do a "please freakin charge" dance), while John's is older than mine and has no issues. Sadly, the list goes on. 

Today my techno-curse reared it's ugly head and set it's malicious sights on my sewing machine. While finishing the last of the napkins for Isabelle's wedding, my machine freaked out, made a loud terrible noise, jammed with the needle down and flashed an E6 error...a motor failure of the burn out/thread tangle persuasion. I had to take off the foot, take out the needle and disassemble to figure out the problem...

If you ever wondered what the inside of your machine looks like, it looks like this:


But even after  all that, I couldn't access the fried motor because Brother, in their infinite wisdom, put it in place where, in order to access it, one must pull out all of the moving parts in front of it to get to the motor in the back...no access panel, nothing. Zilch. 

I haven't even had the machine a year!  It is going to cost more to fix it, than the value of the machine. So, once again I find myself eyeball deep in projects that need to be done NOW and in the new machine market.  Lord love a duck.

So I went to the shop to finish the napkins - hey, at least one victory - and then, when I came home  I found in front of the house, a lady yelling obscenities at NOTHING.  I get parked, get out and she starts yelling more.  I thought she was on the phone, but nope, that yelling got directed at me as I walked inside.  I watched her for a few minutes to see if she'd move on, but she didn't, just kept on coming into the yard, walking across the street into my neighbor's yard and yelling more.  As I was on the phone trying to get an officer to come down, two showed up and apprehended her.  I wonder what the real situation was...was she distraught?  High?  Crazy? 

Who knows.  All I know is it's time for some tacos de lengua and some TV.  I'll tackle the machine problem tomorrow.

Murphy's Law of Quilting

Naturally, once I got my quilting groove back, Murphy's Law figuratively punches me in the face and steals my wallet. Seriously, it's uncanny. IN the last few months, with years having followed patterns and not deviating a whole lot, I've been making a lot of things without patterns...just letting them develop as the ideas come to mind.  It's been a lot of fun sewing without the safety net of a pattern, and it's been one of the few times in my creative life that it's come with just about unilateral success.  I've felt like lately I've been growing as a quilter, becoming more adventurous, more willing to try new things and new ideas, and developing my skills more.  I've always been intimidated somewhat by all the brilliant quilters around me, that I can't hold a match to their skills but it's been a really encouraging experience finding my groove and finding confidence in my work.

But I'm beginning to think somewhere someone installed a camera in my sewing room and waits for every time I am on a real creativity streak and pushes the "ruin her day with something ridiculous because we can't have this kind of fun just happening willy nilly" button.

My machine has bit the dust, and all because of a stupid pin run over while making a shop sample. 

Son of a bee sting.  Everyone runs over pins, every day, all the time.  It's like the one quilting "rule" that everyone knows about and laughs in the face of.  Wellllllllll now, isn't this special.

To the right, is the quilt I was working on when my machine up and croaked, only it was at a lesser state of completion.  I was in the middle of piecing Row flippin' 2. Finished the rest at the shop.

 But back to the machine.  Like I said, I ran over a pin. Broke my needle.  Check out the half-a-pin still in the fabric. It happens to everyone.  But where's the other half?

Well...there's the point of impact but uh...the rest of the pin is MIA and this time, it didn't hit me in the face like it has in the past.  Go figure.  

Would you believe that just before I started this project, I dusted out my machine?  Anyway, I opened my machine up and the other half of the pin is still nowhere to be readily seen. There's my bobbin thread, and some dust, but uh...no pin. What the hell, Bernina?

 Oh riiiiiight. It's THERE.  Stuck in the bobbin region, see it to the right?  I took out the bobbin thing, and got the pin out.  Surprisingly, it wasn't in there tight at all, really it pretty much fell out on its own when I went to grab it (gently) with some needlenose pliers...because in that space my fingers might as well be Oscar Meyer weiners. I thought "hey, if it came out this easy, all I have to do is put my bobbin region back together like I have a million times before, clean it out and I'll be back in business!"  Foolish, foolish me.

Foolish me indeed.  Remember Murphy's Law?  Yeah, here's where it punched me in the face.  I reassembled everything as I always have, got it all clean and rethreaded everything and got ready to sew.  When I used the hand wheel (as always) to pull up the bobbin thread...well, Houston, we have a problem.  My needle was getting bent, like so.  I thought, hey man, what gives? So I figured I didn't get the bobbin region put back together correctly. I took it apart, made sure it was in right (it was) and tried again...5 times.  Same thing every time.  So what do I do in these situations?  CALL MY MOMMY!  No seriously, she's good with machines, and knows Berninas. I told her what happened, and she confirmed what I was reallllly hoping wouldn't be true - the timing on my machine was beyond screwed up and I had to take it in to be looked at.






Well, at $135 for the shop to even look at my machine, plus whatever it cost to fix it plus whatever else they found was wrong (which I know there are other issues with it, mainly electronic) plus whatever parts were needed to fix it...Yeah, Murphy's Law stole my wallet too, because Berninas only take Bernina parts and Bernina's prices are just laughably ridiculous. 

Were this machine not a hand me down from Mom, I could never afford to buy a Bernina at all.  But I also can't afford to fix it right now either.  $135 to look at it plus $X to do whatever it needs?  I can buy a good little workhorse machine for that much and I plan to once my paycheck hits, hopefully. It was recommended several times that I look at a Brother machine, because they're relatively inexpensive but are good quality machines. So I'll give one a look and see what I come home with. 

So yeah...My creative burst got stymied by one stupid little pin.  Well played, Murphy you asshole, well played.