My baby's back!

As I mentioned earlier, I had some difficulty sewing the frame for the soccer banner, because my sewing machine stopped working. For the past few months, the motor had been working sporadically and of course it just HAD to quit when I was making the banner (for most of the 16 feet of stitching I had to put on there, at least 12 of it was hand-cranked).

Very reluctantly, I brought my machine to the local sewing store. This Bernina is 11 years old, a present from my parents. When I got it, it was probably a top-of-the-line machine, which was very nice and generous of the parental units. In the sewing store, every machine there is now computerized and looks pretty flash (another lady who came in remarked to me, "hey, your machine looks like mine! It actually has knobs!"). However, the store people assured me that this Bernina model was a very good machine, that I should hang onto it, and that a good cleaning was probably all it needed. A cleaning, by the way, is still a good chunk of money, but definitely LESS than the cost of a new machine!

It went in on Monday and last night I got the call that it was ready to be picked up! I was also extremely fortunate, because their repairman worked for Bernina for 20 years and they said he chooses to fix the Berninas first. I spent a few minutes chatting with the ladies of the store (who were all delightfully nice and charming), admiring their hand-sewn "Wicked" Elphaba doll with its tiny little fingers (who knew you could turn fingers inside-out that were only 3 mm wide?!) and remininscing about black-and-white televisions and fathers who didn't repair things around the house in a timely fashion (like TV's, even though he was a TV repairman!). That was a hoot!

This store offer sewing classes to children (from age 8), so maybe in another year or so I'll enroll Miss Mika, so she can get started on her fashion design career. =) Hopefully she'll never sew through her finger like I did, when I was little...