strangely satisfying
Oooooh! Mum and I did have one really satisfying afternoon at the sewing machine last week - but it didn’t involve any sewing. No, after trying to sew some birdhouses together (egads! don’t ask!) and finding that not only did my machine sound like a world war one machine gun, but it was no longer producing stitches - only dangly loops, Mum and I pulled the lower part of the machine apart and ventured where no man or woman had ever been before, armed only with a pair of long nose tweezers.
God it was good! We actually fought over who was going to pull that amazingly huge and fabulous bit of fluff from the newly discovered lode. Me! No me! Give me the tweezers, they’re mine after all! Well it’s my machine!
A wee bit hard to get the bobbin case apart at first - we were afraid of snapping things - but then followed a marvellous 2 hours of removing enough felted fluff to fill a mattress!
Well maybe just a pincushion :-) but I cannot BELIEVE all this stuff fitted into my bobbin case and my sewing machine still worked - well only kind of. Poor sewing machine!
There was even this weird anty stuff - it fell out of the back. We couldn’t tell whether it was dust, dirt, eggs or something ever yuckier! This is Queensland after all - you never can tell!
And guess what! We even managed to re-assemble the bobbin case and now the machine is humming smoothly and making lovely even stitches. They’re even the right length now!
Do you think there might be something in this having your machine serviced stuff?
18 August, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Oh My! Look at all that fluff! I would agree, cleaning your sewing machine is a good thing.
18 August, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Oh my goodness! I think I will have to have my machine serviced…. I’m sure there’s stuff like that in mine too :-( Hmm…maybe I should do it myself?! It does look like fun ;-)
18 August, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Its incredible what you find inside the machine. I try to do this often but still my pile looks like yours.
18 August, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I try to clean mine often, but have never actually taken out the bobbin case, so who knows… I once set out with the intention of cleaning my mother’s sewing machine (I was 10 or so), but never managed to put the bobbin case-pieces back together, so I’m a bit wary of doing that on mine. I follow the advise the repairman gave me at the time though: use your hoover to suck out all the dust from the bobbincase area from time to time - that takes care of most of it.
18 August, 2008 at 4:45 pm
What a brilliant lady you are! It takes time to clean all those tiny holes and corners, but it is worth of it! You can save money (for new pieces of fabrics, of course ;-) and enjoy the lovely sound of your sewing machine.
18 August, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Ha! It’s almost worth “saving up” all that fluff just to have a good clean out! I NEVER cleaned my very first sewing machine that I got when I was 14. Of course, didn’t oil it either. It never gave me a problem. Hmm, might be worth a look into it in the attic just for some fun. Or not.
18 August, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I never thought to take off the back and get in to all the lint that way. Thanks for posting this!
19 August, 2008 at 4:32 pm
YUCK!
20 August, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Impressive collection of fuzz!
23 August, 2008 at 7:40 am
I had to laugh reading this post: I just spent last weekend picking through exactly the same area on my machine, picking away the colonies of dust bunnies settled there after my machine started acting funky. Not for the bigger bunnies in the rest of the house…