Singer Souvenir

I wanted to save a piece of my Singer, so I pulled off this logo. It's about 3/4" by 1". However, it had 1/2" long plastic prongs on the back attaching it to the machine that needed to be removed before it could be useful. I pulled out my rotary tool, cut off the prongs, and hot glued a thumb tack in their place. It joined the spool pin on my bulletin board, which you can see is not getting used for its intended purpose:

(Amanda made me the awesome Double Unicorn Success Club card. It refers to this blog post. We love The Bloggess. And unicorns.)

My New Machine

Well, my last post about my sewing machine turned out to be a bit too prescient, unfortunately. After I finished the pot holders, I changed the stitch length to do some paper piecing, but the tension just wasn't right and I couldn't fix it. I did a lot of sewing last year, and my machine hadn't been checked in a while, so I decided to take it in. Unfortunately, a part was broken that couldn't be replaced.

So, after much emotional trauma, I decided to buy a Bernina 330. As much as I loved my old Singer, I'd known for a while that I wouldn't get another when the time came. In addition to a Bernina dealer, we also have Pfaff, Brother, Janome, and Babylock dealers in town. I did consider a Janome Horizon (look at all that throat space!) until I found out how expensive they are. I knew this would be a pricey purchase, but I didn't have that big of a budget; I struggled to justify what I did spend, even though my husband was totally okay with the price of the Bernina. I did try to find a used machine, but in a town this size, we don't have a big second-hand market, and I didn't have a lot of time to waste. 

This was particularly unfortunate timing, as my new niece is due in May, and it's a seriously set back my quilting schedule to learn a new machine with all the traveling I'm doing for work, as there's no way the quilt will be done in time for the shower next month. The manual for this machine is 50 pages, and it refers to it as a "sewing computer." Intimidating. It's a bit of a learning curve. Of course, the first thing I did was try out the alphabet stitch, and all the other fancy stitches I've never had before! I think my favorite feature is going to be the start/stop button - you don't have to use the foot pedal! I anticipate that this will makes sewing so much more comfortable. The biggest adjustment, besides all the buttons, will be that my Singer was in a table and this one is not. We'll see how it goes!

Recycled Spools

I had 2 old empty spools that I wanted to save simply because they were old, but what to do with them to make them useful? They were just sitting in a box of random parts. Enter my new rotary tool obsession! I cut off one end of each spool, since there was one end of each that was in better shape than the other.

The pin.

This was definitely the most challenging of my rotary tool cutting, since I had to cut through the outer layer, six spokes, and the inner layer. I filled the holes that were created with hot glue to protect the label from getting a hole poked through it. I coated the labels with a layer of Mod Podge for additional protection.

The back of the pin.

The magnet.

They are about 1" in diameter.

Rotary Tooling

Quite a while ago we bought a rotary tool. Despite my excitement over now having one at my disposal, I didn't do anything with it. That's recently changed, as I now seem to pull it out all the time! Usually, this randomly occurs to me around 8:30pm on a week night, so I don't have "before" pictures of these projects.

Rotary tool with cutting and sanding attachments.

The first project I attempted was cleaning up this metal moose ornament. I got it in 2011 as a souvenir from Yellowstone, but when I pulled it out the next Christmas, the coating was flaking off and making a mess. I put off dealing with it because I was afraid it would make even more of a mess. For a sanding project, I would definitely recommend a mask, as I ended up with dust up my nose. I used a sandpaper tube attachment, and now all the flakiness is gone. However, while it's clean and smooth, it doesn't look very attractive, so I've still got to figure out what to do with it. A trip to Hobby Lobby is in order.

Next I trimmed about a 1/4" off the top of this pen tube. It was tapered and I wanted both ends to look the same. It's only a 1/4" in diameter, but I was concerned about using the rotary cutting discs because they look like really stiff circles of sandpaper; could they really cut anything? Turns out, they can, but it makes a bit of a mess if you are cutting through plastics, and I definitely recommend safety glasses to avoid getting bits in your eyes.

I've had this pen since I was a kid, and, even when it no longer wrote, I kept it because loved it. However, I still have no idea how I'm going to turn this tube into a useful memento.