They Will Not Beat Me!

Machines are not our friends. We're doing our best to remember that since our most recent run-in with the Bobcat that Broke. And of course the long line of machines before that that tried to beat us. The precious paint sprayer, the possessed first digger, the second borrowed digger, the trilogy of concrete cutters and the pitiful concrete mixer to name a few.

But here's the problem. When they work, they make life so much easier!!!!

Last year, after we returned from our trip to Europe, I expressed a desire to get a sewing machine and to learn to sew. We found one for a good price online, and it arrived in record time. And then sat in its box for months.

Not only were we a bit busy building bathrooms, stairs and fences, giving me plenty of excuses to procrastinate, but the fact of the matter is that this sewing machine intimidated the hell out of me. Power drills? No problem! Cold showers? Sure. Climbing into muddy holes up to my shoulder? Yes please!

But a sewing machine? Scary!

Doesn't it look menacing? You can almost hear it growling at me.

And of course, given our history with machines in general, my intimidation at trying to figure out how to use it without spearing my finger with the needle was combined with a fair share of terror that something awful would go wrong and I'd somehow blow up the house.

But this weekend I conquered it!

I'll pause for your round of applause, here.

I decided to start with a project that's been long overdue. See our lovely shower curtains that we installed in our bathroom?

Well they don't have very much reinforcement around the holes where the curtain rings hook through, so with constant use, the rings holding up the curtain on the right (the one that gets opened and closed every time someone gets in or out of the shower) had ripped completely through most of the original holes. We tried to temporarily fix the problem by simply punching new holes in a different spot which worked for a while, but we had a very sad and sorry droopy shower curtain situation happening most of the time.

Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to actually take a photo of this droopiness, but here's a picture of the curtain on the other side that doesn't get as much use. You can see it's still straining on its curtain rings a bit too, so it may need attention in the future. One thing at a time, though!

I took myself off to Spotlight to see what I could find in the way of some kind of material to sew over the top section to give it a bit more strength. I wanted something that would be a little bit transparent so it didn't have too much visual weight at the top of the curtain, which is transparent itself. And I found this stuff! Sew-in Interfacing. It has just the right level of transparency, and seems quite strong.

I cut a section and folded it over a couple of times so that I could have doubled-over layers of the interfacing along the top of each side of the curtain.

Meanwhile, that sewing machine glared at me from across the table, just waiting to pounce on me when I dared to use it.

I decided to raid my stationery supplies for some bulldog clips to temporarily attach the interfacing to the curtain in favour of pinning, since I didn't like the idea of pushing pins through the plastic of the curtain. The clips didn't hold very strongly, but it was enough to at least keep the various pieces together until I could sew them together.

And then came the moment of truth! Time to set the machine lose!

And it wasn't too bad! Definitely nowhere even remotely close to perfect stitching, but it was doing the job ok!

 So I repeated with another line of stitching.

I'm definitely not going to win any awards for being able to sew straight, but I'm not going to complain. It's early days yet.

So once I had my rows of extremely wonky stitching, it was time to get to the question of punching holes for the curtain rings. In my trip to Spotlight I'd also invested in a little Eyelet Kit.

These are my kind of instructions. 1) Cut hole. 2) Insert & Punch Eyelet. Love it.

So I did! I found a hammer and a bit of scrap timber, and punched away!

And in no time, I had eyelets placed nicely along the top of my curtain.

Which, I must say, look pretty darn schmick! Please ignore the hole in the ceiling. We're still yet to get a light fitting to put there.

The interfacing's slight transparency is definitely a good thing. You can still kind of see the pattern on the shower curtain showing through in the light, which thankfully also makes my wonky lines of stitching almost invisible!

So I think we can say that round one goes to me! Sewing machine: 0.

We'll make a good housewife of me yet!