Sewing Machine Love

A little while back my trusty Lemair sewing machine, circa 1970-something (thanks, Mum!) stopped working. Just like that. I was in the middle of sewing a Mirabel heart for Mikes and it conked out. Thankfully, I had heard of Barry and his amazing Barry's Sewing Centre (or should I say "sewing machine man", as he seems to be known on the interwebs) and I knew that things would probably be OK. Barry is a gem - he sat with the machine and looked at it and had it fixed in five minutes - amazing!

Anyway, another reason to love Barry is for his amazing collection of sewing machines. OK, some of them aren't his - they're machines he's repairing - but they're all there on display, and I couldn't stop staring 'cause they looked so good. And reminded me of another reason why I wanted my lovely old relic to be repaired - new machines generally just don't look as good as these babies.



More/bigger snaps on Flickr.

Pottering around

Finally got some of my pottery back with its final glaze. I like it it all its wonky glory and have already put it to use.


And I am happy to announce that after conking out a while back, my old and trusty sewing machine has been nursed back to life and given a good service. I'm happy with that - it means I don't, yet, have to venture into the world of new sewing machines, with there fancy menus and plasticness (mine is all metal and ox-like).

In celebration I figured it was time to venture into the world of patchworking, and below is what I came up with last week - a pot holder courtesy of the Lotta Jansdotter pattern from her Simple Sewing book. The best part was picking fabrics that work together - I used a heavy cotton for the main bit (blue and white), a lighter cotton (polka dots), a woolen felt (grey) and the hang tag is grey linen.

Hearts for Mikes & Mirabel

Finally got some time to make hearts for Mikes' Hearts for Mirabel campaign-thingo when my inherited sewing machine (which is rather old and can be seen here) decided to stop working :( I wanted to make some sort of mobile of hearts, but that won't be happening as hand sewing takes a lot longer than the machine kind, as I discovered. Oh well, these are it then. On the back is a black and white spotted fabric and the front is, funnily enough, hearts from a kinda charming and very sturdy Ikea cotton fabric.



And there are a heap more hearts over here, made by the 105 members (and rising) of the I Heart Mirabel Flickr group set up by Pip at Mikes. Woo hoo.