Suddenly I am alone. Not the kind of alone I chose or even anticipated but the shocking, sudden abandonment that came out of the blue and has left me dazed and a little confused.
No, my family and friends are all fine. It’s more personal, that only another sewist, like you, would understand.
My fairly new sewing machine is in the shop for an unexpected and extended stay.
We’ve only been together for six months. We were still in the honeymoon phase of our, what I planned to be, lifelong relationship. I was still googly-eyed with it. My machine could do no wrong. Until it did, and did it in public just to make it a wrong-er wrong. Oh, the shame.
We were at the store where we first met, taking the Machine Mastery Class they hold for all new machine owners (if you bought your machine there). We were learning buttonholes because unlike my old New Home, sewing machines are now computers and they have perfected and simplified, yet at the same time complicated, buttonhole making.
The instructor was using my machine for a demo and right there, in front of all, she called my machine out, “That’s not right.” and “Something’s wrong here.”
What??? How can that be? My machine? My precious? Really?
And just like that, the illusion was shattered. My machine was not perfect. My new machine had a pre-existing condition, a flaw, a sensor that was not working as it was designed to work.
I was advised to leave it there at the shop.
“It will be about 3 to 4 weeks,” she warned me.
Let that sink in.
Three to four weeks with no sewing machine. Is that possible?
Well, yes, I know for a fact it is as I have in the past, ignored my New Home machine, the one I had replaced with this new-fangled computer-machine, for longer than four weeks. But that was my own choosing.
Surely you see the difference, right? I knew you would get it.
It’s like that Cat’s in the Cradle song. If we choose not to sew, to do other things with our time, that’s all okay. But then, when we want to hang out with our sewing machine and it can’t reciprocate we are left with regret.
We stand there, feeling all the guilt for being a bad role model to it. We don’t know what to do. What do other people do when we’re at the fabric store? When we’re scheming of projects and cutting fabric?
It’s not so bad, I try to convince myself. I do have a serger. Why not make lemonade out of this and really get into using and mastering the serger? Or what about cutting out a bunch of projects in these next few weeks? Or really, what about tackling those other tasks, like the paperwork that’s piling up, or clearing out the attic, or painting the bedroom?
Yeah, right.
If my sewing machine were home, any of those might be fine for stalling but to choose to do them now that some extra time just opened up…. not the same.
The reality is though (and I hate to be that person with the realist point of view) four weeks will be over before I know it.
My machine will probably be back home, and in better working order, before I finish writing this blog post (what with the editing, and the pictures and the procrastination)
And then it will be my machine and me back in our little space, just the two of us, sewing, and sewing, to my heart’s content. But more importantly, I will be the one to say when we sew and when we don’t. Power restored back to the human.
But Seriously,
If you’ve recently bought a new machine, and especially if you, like me, bought the floor model, go to any and all classes the dealer offers. I thought I didn’t need to go. I knew how to sew. I knew I could figure out this machine with time and the manual and maybe some google searches, but I went anyway. And it was the experienced person’s ear that could tell my machine was not acting right.
I wouldn’t have caught that as soon as she did. I may not have gotten around to sewing a project with buttonholes to find out my buttonhole foot was not synching up with my machine for another six months. But my machine is still under warranty, and it will be fixed. It may cost me time and a little heartache but very little else. I’m so glad I went to class.