I’ve been giving my sewing machine a pretty good workout the last week so I thought I’d introduce you! I know machines are personal things–whether it’s a brand or a vintage or whatever, the important thing is that you have to love sewing on it. And I really love sewing on mine!

No machine is perfect. I’ve been known to yell some not-so-choice words at all my machines. I had the same ole mega-cheap Brother machine for 15 years. I can’t really say it did anything well, but it went with me everywhere, from college to my first midwest apartment, to Europe, back to Texas. And finally about ten years ago, after the bobbin winder cracked off and then part of the machine bed went missing, Derek finally talked me into buying a new one and adding a serger into the mix. Well, not that he had to talk me into either! I didn’t do any research and the extent of my machine knowledge went something like: “Singer=good brand” and “Bernina=better brand but expensive”. So I bought a low-end basic Singer.

Since then I’ve gotten a little smarter. Or the internet got smarter, and overwhelmed me with machine options. I read about vintage machines and cried a little when I realized my mom no longer owned the very machine on which I’d learned to sew, an all-metal Singer in a solid wood cabinet that these days would probably drive an $800 price tag on ebay. After a couple of years of sewing on my new Singer, something went haywire. The zig-zag stopped working. I’m sort of a wannabe gearhead so I took apart the entire machine in search of the problem. Trouble is, I’m usually clueless about how to put things back together once I get them apart. Here was my excuse at last to get a machine that I’d fully researched.

My biggest beef with machines so far had been buttonholes and their feed. There’s nothing more frustrating than sewing two layers together, and watching the top layer creep longer and longer. I like sewing without pins so I didn’t want to use pins to ease everything together all the time.

Those features are how I landed on the Juki F600. It was either that or an industrial machine–if only I had the space for one! There’s a mechanism in the Juki feed that makes it turn in a box rather than back and forward. I wasn’t sure exactly how this would improve sewing, but it does seem to feed fabrics much better than my previous machines. I can also loosen the foot pressure, another feature I never had on my others. This has become an almost essential adjustment in sewing slippery lycra or just about any stretchy lingerie fabric. The heavier the foot pressure, the more the foot pushes and stretches the top layer.

And the buttonholes are to die for. This machine does every type, both boxed and keyhole buttonholes. Light-stitched buttonholes for shirts, and heavy-weight buttonholes for coats. I haven’t sworn once at a buttonhole in progress since I got this puppy three years ago.

A coincidental bonus was the bright lighting. There are two led lights, which make the bed very bright. I have poor vision even with correction, and tend to turn on as many lights as possible when I’m sewing. The Juki has a lot of features which I’ve never touched and probably won’t, like all the fancy lettering stitches. But it’s my first machine that stops needle down, unless I tell it not to. It’s quiet. And the automatic thread-trimmer makes life a little easier. None of these are deal-breakers but I have to say, this is the first machine that I have loved and look forward to sewing on. Sometimes emotional attachments are hard to measure.

All my sticky notes, reminding me stitch lengths and widths for lingerie…

I gave up trying to be neat about my elastic. This is a little cotton bralette I was working on over the weekend…

The second bedroom is an all-purpose office and cat hangout. It looks pink and it is pink! This was also taken in the dead of afternoon, when the bright Texas light was blinging everything out. I dreamed about watermelon walls with white linen curtains for something like, oh, five years.

At the moment I’ve squeezed an old drafting table in the corner next to my writing desk, to double as a cutting and machine-sewing area. It’s not feng shui but will have to do till we get the rest of the boxes unpacked, and it is the perfect cutting height for now. Cutting on the floor back in the day just killed my back and my wrists. And I do love to cut! Probably more than sewing…

Then I had to narrow down my machines. My sewing machine was a birthday present for my big 4-0 a couple of years ago. It’s a Juki F600, which I chose after much research and review-reading. I love this machine so much so that I sold off two of my old machines in the move, including the halfway disassembled 1987 Brother on which I made half my college wardrobe. Moving involves so much sentimental sorting, and I’m a terribly sentimental keeper.

Sewing in a small space is quite okay at the moment since I’m doing a lot of pattern work, mostly on the computer. In the meantime, I’ve been trawling Apartment Therapy and Ikea for ideas on small space organization. What I really need is a way to get my thread high and away from kitties.

This is T-Bone. We’ll see how long the curtains survive the claws… I once caught him swinging halfway up a curtain after an hour of parkour with his brothers. I have hours of free entertainment with them, to say the least!

{The groom wore a white silk suit that he calls his Pentecostal preacher suit. I still have no idea where he found this and think he had the better costume! I scrounged mine up from a sale at Zara.}

I really like being a homebody now, so much so that when we travel I tend to want to bring my homesteader hobbies with me. And Derek likes to remind me I don’t have lightweight hobbies. I know with a little ingenuity some folks can make great art with an phone camera but sigh, I’m not one of those people. I like tools. I hauled a 40-lb bag of compost from Belgium to Poland during my phase of “pretend gardening” with little potted plants when we were making lots of road trips. I attracted a lot of affectionate looks toting a massive purple metal watering can through Heathrow airport. (I just had to have it, and the English have THE BEST gardening tools.) And so lately I’ve been wanting to take my sewing whenever I go somewhere.

Have you seen these before? Derek’s so cool, he looked at the box and said, “Look at that, it’s a Ja-NOH-mee Mini!” I never knew that’s how you pronounced Janome. And there ya go.

This is a $50 machine and weighs less than a pair of shoes and is about twice the width of my hand. I’d read about it on a couple of quilty blogs as being a decent machine to tote around so I thought, why not? It actually has a nice feed, although it’s verrry slow and there’s no speed control. There’s no light, but it has six stitches, including 3 zig-zags, goes backwards and forwards and that’s pretty much all I really need!

Of course I probably should’ve packed it better because it begs to be broken. Have you seen the way those guys throw suitcases onto the conveyer? The plastic bobbin winder broke off in my suitcase, and I ran out of bobbin thread before I could finish my project. But if any of you have a hankering for a travel machine, I’d definitely give this a cute and very useful thumbs up.

See, I got my lingerie-sewing fix.

And it sure beats hauling compost for a sense of home.