Oh What a Haul!

I haven't been sewing a lot lately because I've been recovering from a medical procedure. It's had me pretty sore and not wanting to move about much. But, to lift my spirits, Ed and I went to a thrift store that isn't that close to our place, one we don't get to go to a lot but one that usually yields something cool, even if it's only a book. This time I went in search of these bags of mens ties they sometimes have for a few bucks. Instead Ed once again spotted a sewing machine!

This time it was a Babylock BL6600, all fancy and electronic sans manual of course. It has the same amount of stitches as my other babylock, but this one is much newer and in better shape. The price tag was a little steep for our budget, which is pretty non-exsistent right now, but how could we pass up a $$$ sewing machine for under $40? Yes, under $40. To top that they were having a deal where if you spent $50 or over you got a coupon for $5 off your next purchase. So I had to go find something else to round out the total. There were no ties to be found that weren't priced singly, but I found yet another bag of fabric that looked like it had a few neat and colorful items in it for $3. And of course we had to get some books. Always books.

Once home, I opened up the bag and whoa what a haul! All of the fabric in the photo was crammed into a bag about the size of a brown shopping bag. Yards and yards of gorgeous fabric (and a few scary ones too)! Usually there are a few good choices in these grab bags, and a lot of "eh" scraps and such. This one had only one print of scraps. The rest was between one yard and 6! 6 yards of a lining fabric was the big yardage but most averaged about 2 yards per piece.

In with the bag were a couple, obviously, vintage pieces. The white, orange and green piece in the lower right is one, along with the burgandy/brown and white elephant home dec weight fabric. There is also a curious white, blue and gold toile-like fabric of Japanese scenes with little Mickey and Minnie dotted throughout. Ed actually spotted that one when I showed it to him; I completely missed it! I'd love to find out where it originates from, or when it was made but alas, there is nothing similar online that I can find or perhaps I'm not searching right.

The green fabric in the upper right is an adorable border print with little people holding umbrellas, or newspapers over their heads and walking around. There is 4 yards of this fabric.

Boy, talk about a good haul! This just goes to show that you can find some remarkable sewing items in thrift stores for not a lot of money. The one's I frequent aren't the smokey, antiquey type either but modern places like Goodwill and Savers, with the occassional independent thrown in there when I can find them.

Sure, you have to "make do" with what you have (and supplement it with new/on sale fabric) sometimes, but once you build up your thirft store fabric stash, usually you have a nice little selection to work from.

My new machine

Well, it's far, far from "new" actually! My beloved boyfriend Ed bought me a gorgeous Singer 201 sewing machine made in 1938! Amazingly, he got it at Goodwill for a princely sum of $50. To those on a budget you know that is a splurge, but in this instance, well worth the money! It came with the table and works off of a knee controller. It worked when we tested it in the store, but upon bringing it home we noticed that the wiring is completely shot. Once we started fiddling with it (and after consulting a vintage Singer sewing group I've been in since I got the Stylist), we've decided to re-wire the motor and controller. The wires to the light and switch seem to be ok for now, so rather than make more work for us, we're leaving it alone, unless those start to disinegrate too. The other wires just crumble to the touch.

We're going to do some before and after pics of the parts. The metal plates on the front and the back (not pictured) were just filthy!

Here is what the cord that goes from the machine to the controller looked like. You can also see the motor wires above that (they look like a join in the machine). We've already bought some replacement cord/wire. The friendly sale guy at Ace Hardware told us we might want something a little more heavy duty than simple lamp wire, so we got a 6 ft power cord we're going to use instead. Apparently it can stand a higher temp if this machine runs hot. We are going to try and find a service manual, in addition to the regular manual, so we will kind of know what we're doing. There seems to be a seller on ebay that has a copy of a service manual that I'm thinking about getting.

We sure got ourselves into something with this baby! But, it will be a fun project we both can work on, and not too much of an investment. Since it doesn't seem to need any other replacements that I can tell, and the finish of it is in great condition, I think that Ed got me a pretty sweet gift! Though, I think he now has a "thing" for these older machines. He seems to spot them faster than I can.

I'll keep posted about the progress, for those that are looking for the same information. I'll try and document what we do as well. I've searched high and low for instructions on how to rewire this thing, and haven't found anything. A very helpful member of the Singer group I'm on has given me a wealth of information though. So, with trial and error and hopefully a serivce manual, we'll get this thing done!

The Hardware

I decided to create a seperate blog for my sewing endeavors since beginner sewing doesn't really belong on an art blog. But, I mentioned there that I had gotten a sewing machine that my beloved boyfriend found for me at a thrift store for the princely sum of $21. It is a Singer Stylist 6548. It uses discs to get the fancier stitches, but I found out a while ago after playing with it that it won't do any of the fancy stitches. What a bummer! It beats the hell out of my Babylock for straight and zigzag though. Pictures of both machines are below:

The Singer

The Babylock

The Babylock I got from a nice lady on freecycle but it's persnickity. The zig zag skips and the fancy stitches start out well but then start looking messy. I'm sure it could use an overhaul. The Singer is by far the easier to work with. It can pull many layers through while the Babylock gets bogged down without much effort.

I had been doing zippers on the Baby but I just found a Singer zipper foot (that was missing from mine) at JoAnn's tonight and it seems to work. I was putting off ordering online, just because I don't know where to order from. I'm still new to this!

Soon I hope to post some of the things I have made so far. I've been seriously sewing for about 6 months now, but building up the stash, thread, and other notions takes a while when you're a starving artist. Actually I'm not starving and am in fact rather plump, but it's such a visual term isn't it?