not my mother's sewing machine

here is the sewing machine i grew up with:

it is my mom's sewing machine, and i think it was her mom's before that. it's the singer slant-o-matic 403 special model, metal, very heavy, made sometime during the late 1950s to early 1960s, and is now considered vintage. i have lots of fond memories with this machine, all of which are associated with my mom. i love the metallic click the machine made when raising the presser foot up and down--that is a "mom noise" to me. i loved watching my mom's hands deftly roll the wheel, moving the needle into position. i loved the warm smell of the machine after it had been on and running for a few hours. my mom taught me how to sew with this machine, and i made the typical pre-teen things: shorts, lunch bags, skirts/jumpers, stuffed animals, etc., and then the typical grown up things: skirts and dresses. it was a great sewing machine--one thing to push, one button for up and down, i only needed one foot. i was--and am--by no means a seamstress, and sewing was elemental for me with that machine.

when i got married, i often had moments where i thought, "oh--if i only had a sewing machine, i'd make that!...or fix that!" i borrowed one, once, to turn a bedspread into curtains in our first apartment. it was a bosch, super nice, and i was super intimidated. i ended up breaking a needle because the fabric was so thick. i bought replacement needles for her, but that was the end of borrowing.

and then my mom got me this when i graduated with my bachelor's:

the brother xr-7700. small, lightweight, 5 or more different feet, computerized, buttons for up, down, right, left, forward, back, and every other way you can think of. it can do stitches like this:

it was perhaps overkill for a novice like me, but it was a sewing machine. i made drapes for our new home, pillow covers, a car seat cover, and i pull it out to fix david's work uniforms--you know, things that require a straight line. but that's it. i have been completely intimidated by it. i felt badly for underutilizing such a nice gift, but not bad enough to look the sewing machine in the face and tell it who's boss.

until last friday night, that is. i have been wanting to make a cloth quiet book for pace. i've gathered all the fabric (also with the help of my mom--asking ward members for their scraps), planned each page, cut everything out and labeled everything into ziploc bags so all i had to do was pull out a packet and sew it up when i have some time. once i got everything into packets, the project was in stalemate. the next step required pulling out the sewing machine.

last friday david went on a priesthood camping trip with the men from our ward, and after pace went to bed, i decided to watch the instructional dvd that came with the sewing machine. i put the video in the player, and when it got to the menu to pick the model, mine was not listed. 'great,' i thought, 'i haven't even started and i'm already 0 for 1...' there were lots of "cr" models and "xl" models, and lots of 1000s and 2000s, but nothing as high as 7700. so i decided to pick one that i thought could be a computerized model similar to mine. it worked--i saw how to change the presser foot, do button holes, and change stitches on the computerized screen.

since friday, i have almost completed two pages for this book! one: the car page. on the left, a stoplight with snaps. the car at the bottom also snaps off so pace can play with it on the road to the right.

decorative stitching along the pond, trees, and flowerbed.

page two: under the sea. little felt fish will live in the net, and pace can pull them out and button them on the red buttons.

decorative stitching along the octopus, seaweed, sand, sand dollar, crab, and starfish.

and today i conquered my arch nemesis: button holes! this machine has a program to do the hole, its very own button hole presser foot, and when you set up the foot correctly with the button, the machine knows how far to go and when to turn around...it was very, very exciting to me!

maybe tomorrow i'll be brave enough to learn how to sew buttons on instead of having to do them by hand...