From Ideal to Real - Part 4: F#%k! S$&t! I broke another needle!
My kid has started repeating everything, and while I decided long ago that curbing cursing in front of him was not going to happen (he is going to have to learn the difference between inside words and outside words quickly), the expletives while I was fighting with my sewing machine were excessive. I was using my mom's machine from the 70s, and it was not thrilled to be sewing through 9 layers of fabrics. In fact, it was so unhappy with me, it quit three inches prior to completing my final seam on my first tote prototype.
If I was going to commit to this, I needed a new machine.
It took me a couple tries to find a machine I liked, but finally found a repair shop (Crown Machine Services) that let me actually try machines (that, apparently, is an ancient idea) and I came home with a rugged machine made to sew thick items. Score!
But that doesn't mean it suddenly solved all my problems. I still broke a bunch of needles and, at one point, jammed up the machine so badly that I had to unscrew the entire thing, watch a bunch of YouTube videos, and I successfully figured out how to repair it (I felt like Super Woman).
And I made a TON of mistakes on my journey to relearn how to sew. The photos on this post are some of my greatest (worsted?) hits so far.
