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| My new flipping machine |
‘Hells
bells and buckets of blood!!!!!!!,’ I cry. ‘How can this piece of inert metal
defeat me. I’m supposed to be a reasonably intelligent person having gained a
good honours degree and postgraduate qualifications! What is more, I used to
make clothes for my children, myself and my husband no problem. I even made a
suit as well as an overcoat for the latter. I should be able to master this
piece of modern machinery surely.’
I
turned to my husband for a solution and support. ‘No use looking at me love.
Give me some wood turning machinery or other complex tools to do with shaping
wood but a sewing machine is way out of my comfort zone,’ he strode off washing
his hands of my problem.
Little
wonder that even my sister, who was proficient at sewing, had decided that when
she bought a more modern up-date on her old model, she couldn’t approach it
without first having a drink of sherry and taking a paracetamol! I’d bought one
in a sale last year intending to make pelmets for the curtains we had made. The
quote I’d had at that time for pelmets only, was almost as much as for making
full length lined patio curtains. No way Jose! I decided I’d make them. I’d
made curtains in the past no sweat. I was forgetting that was on my very old Singer
which had been a treadle before being up graded by having a motor fitted. I’d
bought it at an auction for very little and it was wonderful. It sewed fabric
that was thick or thin: it didn’t throw a fit at anything it was asked to sew.
True, it only went backwards and forward; none of the fancy stuff, but that was
what I needed.
This
new machine has gadgets for button holes, can make embroidery and goodness
knows what. I only want it to sew and fondly imagined that it would work in a
similar manner to my old darling. I tried to thread it as I would have done in
the past: was that good enough for it? You’ve guessed the answer. No! I fished
out the instruction book and tried to carefully follow the directions to the
letter but it was like trying to assemble a flat pack from MFI or IKEA. There’s
always something that gets missed out in the process or in my case, the
‘take-up lever’. Where is it and why isn’t it marked on the diagram? I’ve tried
every hole and lever and still although it looks quite good when threaded, as
though it should work, it doesn’t. The cotton gets snagged on the mechanism
under the plate.
I’m
torturing myself now as my husband has decided that at long last the pelmets
are essential kit to have for him to be happy, as well as because my friend
Sue, asked me ‘Have you got a sewing machine?,’ without thought I replied,
‘Yes. Well I couldn’t lie could I?’
‘Just run up these two lines of sewing on the
throws I want shortened. You don’t mind do you?,’ she replied.
How could I
refuse? She’s been very helpful to us in the past, so of course I said I’d do
it. She’d duly delivered the throws in bags with cotton etc for me to do the
job which I’d got out this morning. What I’d forgotton was that she’d included
a much thumbed copy of a Catherine Cookson novel.’ That was much more my thing:
reading I mean.. I can do that at the drop of a hat anywhere, loving being
transported into another world. The more varied the books’ content the better.
I‘d shoved it aside reluctantly, being resolved to tame the beast that is the
sewing machine.
As I became ever
more demented, trying all I could think of, my thoughts strayed back to the
book. After two hours of being angry and humiliated, I threw in the towel. I
felt exhausted. I made a cup of tea and curled up with the book.
Sorry Sue, I’ll
deliver your things back together with the machine. If you fathom it out
perhaps you’ll instruct me. I slowly relaxed.
