Foot Pedal Fiasco

So Friday didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, as these things usually don’t.

I did get set up with my sewing machine on the table, I had cut out pattern pieces for the blouse on Thursday night, and was raring to get at it. I know I said the curtains would be first, but at that point I honestly believed I had time to do both before my allotted time ran out.  Also both were blue so I did thread the machine in the right colour.  Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it..

Any how I ran a little test row of stitches on a bit of scrap. The blouse (a wonderful pattern from Mrs Depew on Etsy) .was in lycra so it need careful handling, although I intended to do the main seams in the over locker.  If anyone is interested I can go into a lot more detail on over lockers and lycra, but for now back to the story. I noticed a strange smell, kinda burning rubber, only very slight but still there.  Well, I thought the machine hasn’t been used for a long while may be there’s a bit of dust got inside and the heat may have burnt it off.  It was only a very slight smell.

So pleased with the row of stitching, no puckering or other problems, I felt able to start running the darts up on the blouse bodice.  Half way through the second I really noticed the smell which had grown into full blown burning rubber, so I stopped and looked round the machine, nothing seemed a miss. I applied my foot to the pedal a little bit more cautiously this time, getting a little concerned at what might happen next, the machine carried on sewing, but I saw out of the corner of my eye a little smoke.  Looking down I realised it was coming out of the cable going into the foot pedal.  Just to test this, as it had stopped as I stopped, I applied a little more pressure with my foot, the machine carried on as good as gold, but just to the right of my foot, a hole formed in the cable and sparks started to come out of it.  At this point I stopped and unplugged the machine, rather quickly actually, then sat and wondered for awhile if this might be a job I could attempt, cut the cable, rewire the foot, surely not that complicated, luckily better sense prevailed, and I decided to take it down to the sewing machine shop for real repairs.

Well as you can imagine this was not a quick process, I was lucky as they had time to fit me in that day, but it was still an hour’s wait. Once home again there was barely enough time to sew up the top let alone the curtains, so they are still waiting, hopefully next Friday now.

The top was very good though. I was extremely pleased with the results as it had been a bit hit a miss with the size, I had contemplated a muslin practice one to get sizing right, but just decided to hope for the best with time constraints and the fact I choose Lyrca for the material, and with luck, it had worked. Although the next time I will make it a little longer in the body as I did have to pull it down a number of times when dancing, but you live and learn.

By the way if anyone was wondering why I didn’t just carry on with the over locker instead, a very good question, you see, once not so long ago we had a rabbit, a lovely animal who was a house pet and could use the cat flap as well as both cats.  Well this rabbit did chew things if you didn’t keep them out of the way, and one day whilst sewing I didn’t realise but the rabbit was under the table having a nice chew on my over locker’s foot pedal cable.  Chewed it clean in half he did, and I only realised as the machine stopped working.  I was fortunate enough that both my over locker and sewing machine had the same style connection for the foot pedal and I was able to swap and finish off with that foot, the rabbit was fine in case you were worried. But since that day I have managed with just one foot pedal that I just move backwards and forwards between machines as needed.

Here are a couple of me in the top:

and doing a stroll (bit like line dancing, but don't tell them I said that)

Enough for now I think, I’ll let you know next week how I get on with those curtains Friday.

Have fun all.

Ally x.