Saturday Blues

The most precious thing I have from the Shibui studio is Flo's Bernina. It's by far the best sewing machine I've ever had, there's no comparison on quality or performance. It hums, it makes beautiful consistent stitches. It's the easiest thing in the world to thread.  So you can imagine my dismay when I put my foot down to start stitching and heard nothing but a whir, and saw no movement. Flo's words came immediately back to me from the first time she allowed me to use her precious machine, and I quote, "If you break it I'll kill you." Those words did not in any way represent her normal way of speaking. She was more likely to tell me I was perfect and that there was no such thing as mistakes, just happy accidents. An accident with her Bernina though would not have been happy. 

How does one get one's machine fixed while in the midst of a mostly national shut down? I'm in California, we are still under stay at home orders. What was I to do? I didn't even know where in normal times I would take it to be fixed. There used to be a Bernina dealer in Paradise, but he died and the shop went up in flames when the rest of the town burned, though he was already gone by that time. I've had it serviced in nearby Magalia, someone comes once a year and you have to make an appointment to have your machine serviced. This year she came the first week of the lock down, and I had already been in stay at home mode for over a week by that time, so I missed getting it serviced this year.

I texted my friend Kathy and asked where I might get it fixed. She said the person who used to service her machine lived in Paradise and was probably no longer here because of the fire. So I stepped back from my plan for the day and and worked on marking the outer edges of my Sparkle Stars quilt. Just as I was finishing that up my husband came in and I told him about his mom's machine. So being the guy who wants to be a fixer - he started asking questions. Have you unplugged it and plugged it back in? The first question he always asks. No, so I did, just to humor him. Still just a whir and no movement. So he started asking what's this? and this? and What's that? pointing at the bobbin winder. I told him and as I looked it at I noticed that the bobbin winder was what was whirring. There was no bobbin on it but it was spinning and making the whirring sound I had been hearing. So you know the rest of the story, right? The needle doesn't go up and down when the bobbin is being wound. Somehow it had been bumped and as soon as I pressed the release button my machine began doing what it's supposed to do. I felt like such a dummy, and was so grateful that Dan had come in and started asking questions.

So my day started out blue because thinking the machine was broken made me very sad. And then my day continued blue, but it became a scrap happy blue because my plan for the day was to finally get something done with the the blue scraps that have been sitting out for the April RSC since the month began. So the afternoon got spent making Roman Square blocks for a small sample quilt that I want to use for quilting practice before I try doing any quilting on Abigail's quilt.

I have 34 blocks for the little sample and have gotten the side triangles cut. I also have lots of scrap strips set aside for the binding, it's fabric from a dress I once made, not left over fabric either - I cut up the dress. I wore it for quite a long while before I did that though. If I think it needs a border I will have to pull some fabric from my stash - but to get this much done just from my scrap drawer I thought was pretty good. I'm glad to be actually using my scraps after having hung onto them for so long thinking that maybe someday I would use them somehow. I'm grateful to Angela at So Scrappy for the RSC challenge that's gotten me using them. This month is light and bright blue. About half the scraps are from my floral log cabin quilt and about half from the scraps left from Flo's stash. I hope by next Saturday to have it put together and start my practice quilting. My OMG for April was to get Abby's quilt to the point of being at least half quilted but I found that I didn't have enough fabric in my stash for a back, so ordered some on line and am still waiting for it to arrive. I'm thinking I won't be meeting my April goal. I'm glad Abby's birthday isn't until June. I hope I can have it done by then.

I'm linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the April RSC at https://superscrappy.blogspot.com

I hope you are staying safe and well!