Saturday, June 20, 2009

My tip for squeezing in moments to sew

Nicole at Sister's Choice posted some suggestions encouraging us all to find a few moments (actually she said an hour) every day to sew. My addition to this would be, have several sewing machines! I'm serious. If you have 2 or 3 sewing machines, you can have them set up for 2-3 different projects, or 2-3 different stages of one project, and it's easier to accomplish something in 5 found minutes between other things if it's all set up and you can just sit down and stitch. I have 2 machines set up at the moment but am thinking of getting Britta's set up for a 3rd project. I cannot just sit down and sew, at least not for long. A 15-minute sewing break is a luxury. If I can chainstitch 10 pairs of fabric pieces in a few stolen moments, I can feel better about going back to what I MUST do.

6 comments:

Catherine said...

Good idea. I can fit that time into a busy day and I may sew longer. I have three machines, so good to go..

Carol Reese said...

Oh, that's a fantastic idea! Wish I had more than one machine, and I've been thinking about acquiring another one. But at the moment, I can't justify that, since the one I have is an EXPENSIVE one, even though the second one I want is not.

Maria Stahl said...

Carol, keep your eyes open at garage sales. I cannot believe how many good, basic, older machines are sold for $25 or less around here. In fact Britta's was a heavy metal Kenmore that I got at a garage sale - all manual (as in, no electronics), very little that can go wrong with it. We downloaded the manual and were good to go.

Unknown said...

Very good idea. I was just thinking about buying a second sewing machine but I was also thinking about giving away my old one.
Thanks for the tip.

Nicole said...

Oh, if only there were two of me! Love the idea of two machines set up at one time to work on two different projects!

Carol Reese said...

Maria, we just don't do garage sales, at least not on any kind of regular basis, but it is a thought. Right now, I could have one set up for quilting and one for sewing some housedresses for me. Most of the time, I'd have one set up with gray thread and one with cream. I do most of my piecework with one or the other of those neutral colors, whichever goes best with the lightest colored fabric in the quilt. Last year's BOM from my local quilt shop was dark blue background with yellow and orange for the 12 different star block, so the cream/ecru color was good. This year's BOM is a white background with red and blue, so a light to medium gray will work better.