Confession of a novice who knows better!

In a former life, I wrote, edited, and published technical documentation and user manuals as well as policies and procedures.

Now, ask me how well I read them now.

Or don't.  Because I'd hate to have to confess to not doing what I used to get slightly peeved that others didn't do.

Ahem.

Yesterday I called the sewing machine dealer to see if I could get the quilting foot because my fabric was pushing the fabric ahead of the presser foot.  I remembered that the walking foot (or even feed foot) helped but I'd also heard of the free motion quilting foot.  The lady who answered very kindly told me I already had it; it came with the machine.  Hmm.  I scheduled a private sewing lesson for January, but then decided I really ought to open the book.  The instruction book.

Walla! The free motion quilting foot:

And while I was at it, foot O (for 1/4" seams):

The instructions to use the quilting foot were there along with darning instructions, all kinds of buttonholes (who knew?), pin tucking, smocking (wow!), and appliqué along with a host of other fun things.  The appliqué information will help me in re-doing the Christmas tree appliqué which had drawn up the fabric too tightly.

So I wandered through the instruction manual page by page.  I found all kinds of marvelous capabilities--like you find if you actually read the manual.

 I didn't know my machine had such wonderful capabilities!  It can even do pin tucking.

The Table of Contents contained a complete listing of everything in an easily scannable image so I can find instructions for each type of sewing quickly instead of hunting through it page by page.

Kudos to the writers who created this handy booklet!  I think I will spend some time trying out all of the functions I had previously only dreamed about doing!!!

My life as a sewist begins

I love my husband.  I love him for lots of reasons, but this time it is for telling me to buy a new sewing machine.  Let me be clear.  I already had a nice Viking that I took into the store for some maintenance.  I don't sew a lot--okay, very minimally, like repairs and hems.  However, I had been playing with the idea of sewing crafty items of some sort to sell.  I could have done that with my not-so-basic Viking, but the ladies at Luke's showed me the latest and greatest Janome sewing machine.  They would have shown me the embroidery machine, but I drew the line at the cost.  So I learned what their best deal was (a really good offer), and I went home to think about it and (hopefully) forget.  I'm sure the saleslady didn't expect to see me again.

But I mentioned it to my husband.  Like immediately before I left the store.  Okay, I texted him about it because he works a regular day job and it was mid-day, mid-week.  And he wrote back about an hour later after leaving his meeting: "Buy it."

I can already hear some people saying, "Oh, how sad that she has to have her husband's permission to buy something."

Let me set the record straight:  I am a stay-at-home wife and mother with an excellent paycheck.  My husband's.  I keep track of it, make 98% of all purchases, and rarely ask permission to do anything. Unless it costs very much money (and that can be $50 if it's just for me because then I need to know if he thinks it's worth it because sometimes it's not.  And maybe subconsciously that I'm worth it.  Poor guy.  He works minimally 40 hours a week and gets about $100 biweekly and that's mostly for gas.  But he told me to buy the machine.

So my new baby arrived:

YAY!

I bought myself this Janome sewing machine ostensibly to make things to sell but really because I wanted to create things.  I may or may not EVER sell something.  By the way, the name of the machine is pronounced like the name Jan followed by oh-may with the emphasis on the last syllable according to their instructional DVD.  Whatever.  I've heard it pronounced at least three different ways, but the DVD's way sounded the most glamorous and appealing to me.