Two Words: Prewound Bobbins

So, I am working diligently to get everything done and organized before surgery, now just nine days away. Wow… I am both so excited and terrified at the same time!

But work continues on the braided rug made of old jeans. After finishing cutting and harvesting denim from more than a hundred and fifty pairs of jeans… probably closer to two hundred. I’ve sold the back pockets on eBay for a nice little bit and I’ve sewed together all the inseams and bottom seams and have (mostly) fashioned them into bags and purses. I say mostly because I’ve still to find a tailor or perhaps shoe repair place that can do the final seams and attach handles as my somewhat specialty sewing machines just can’t do more than twelve layers of denim and/or leather (handles or straps). I am excited about finishing them though, they are going to be tré chic when they are complete.

The three inch strips of denim are, for the most part, now combined to form reasonable lengths. It took some time and experimentation to figure it out, but I’ve landed on a length that I think will be most productive when I start braiding. I’m taking lots of photos and making tons of notes, I think I am going to do a in-depth tutorial on creating these rugs from start to finish, that is, starting at the very start to include collecting jeans and harvesting the fabric all the way through to the finished rug. So, I won’t put too much of that into these posts pre-tutorial.

But I did do something that I thought I’d never do while in the process of turning the three inch strips into the finished strip for braiding. And that was to buy pre-wound bobbins.

I don’t know why, exactly, I hesitated to do so, maybe something leftover from an early home-ec class or something about being thrifty and always winding your own bobbins. And heaven knows that I have enough bobbins and don’t really need to invest in more. But I found that with all the basic sewing that I’ve been doing, I have been just going through tons of bobbins and to sit and wind bobbins seems to be the most essential waste of time. Additionally, the pre-wound bobbins that I purchased seem to be wound very efficiently, that is to say, it seems to be twice as much thread on the bobbins than when I wind them, so I find that I am not changing bobbins as often. Which is awesome… again with the amount of basic sewing I am doing, nothing is as irritating just getting into a groove of sewing just to have the bobbin run out. And as my machine is overdue for maintenance, the bobbin sensor is getting in the habit of not alerting me and I find that I can run through feet of sewing before I realize that its not stitching! Argh!

So, here is officially my stamp of approval on pre-wound bobbins. They’re not overtly expensive (I get mine off eBay), they save me both time and frustration and they are help saving my sanity! Can’t think of better reasons to use them!

So, do you use pre-wound bobbins? I’d love to get the impressions of others who do a lot of sewing. Ever tried them? What’s your take?

 

Still Keeping Busy at Work! But Getting Some Things Done at Home…

This past weekend was interrupted by a request from The Kid to go ‘abandoned house hunting’. Seems he has been collecting a few military surplus items and really wanted to go camping, but now with the overnight temperatures falling down to the 40’s, I am thinking it is a tad too cold for overnight. As a compromise, we stayed in a 4 star hotel! Now, that’s my kind of camping!

This hunting trip was unusually disappointing… most of the homes we ran across had been abandoned some time ago, some were even a little too scary to go into… the biggest thing I worry about is having the floor give way on us as we explore.  We did stumble onto one house that had their tornado shelter in amazingly good condition, although it seems that it had already been scavenged. It was nice to spend some one on one time with my teenager, though, and he did most of the driving.

Short of that, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I did manage to coerce some small things out of the Kid in order to be able to justify the trip, like this wonderful installation in the garage.

We found the cable kits at IKEA last weekend and I picked up a couple just because I knew they would come in handy somewhere. And here it was! I am still stomping my feet to get everyone to put tools away after using now that we’ve completed the garage makeover, and I figure this might just make it a little bit easier. If you can just reach over and hang something, that has to be easier, right?

We made the first attempt at placing beadboard into fronts of the cabinet doors for the new cabinet in my sewing/crafting room, but sadly, it just didn’t work well. The beadboard comes in these huge sheets and it was just too thick to a) get good adhesion and b) look nice. Thankfully, it was easy to pull the pieces off and clean up what little glue was left behind.

I found a faux beadboard wallpaper at Home Depot (online) so, now am waiting its arrival for ‘take 2’. This is what the online ad looks like, so I am hopeful.

This entire wall of cabinets already in the room have beadboard fronts, so I want this new cabinet to match. (BTW, those cabinets store 95% of my fabric stash, most still on the original fabric bolt). I love that I was able to do this when we built this house.

I have also been slowly working on the two Singer featherweight sewing machines I bought via eBay. I am combining the best of the two into one working on with its beautiful bentwood case restored and varnished and poly’ed. Very close to having those done as well. I doubt that I will sew with it, what with the four other computerized machines I have, but I just love the design and simplicity of the machines and wanted to have one. Who knows, maybe after the apocalypse, it will come in handy!

Two smaller things I was able to get done were more decorations for the sewing room. One is an “accidental” collection of sewing machine feet, some from my mother’s sewing machine, some from my machines and some that came with the the recent featherweights that I recently purchased. Some of them are so intricate that they needed to be displayed. So here they are:

I love the variety of these and most of them I have no idea what they are used for. I think the one in the upper right corner was used for making/sewing ruffles.

And the next one is something that surprised me, but these are the bobbins for the older featherweight machines. I just loved the idea! So, yes, I had to go find more. 🙂

Okay! Yikes, once I got going I couldn’t stop! LOL. That’s enough for today, much to do this week in preparation for this weekend.