My machines

 Ok so at this point, I have some new toys that I haven't tried out yet. The Giant Husband has taken the kids to visit his parents today so I'm going to pretend I'm not scared of new things and try them out. And also introduce you to my good friend Naomi.

This is Naomi. Naomi the Janome. She's a Janome Sewist 525S. I have had her for. . . Probably nearly twenty years! I spent hours at a Janome shop before choosing her. The woman recommended this one as the best beginner machine they had, that was simple enough for a beginner to use, but wouldn't be grown out of too soon.

These were actually a really popular machine. They were used on the TV show "The Great British Sewing Bee" and were apparently a very common machine in trade schools. They stopped making them a few years ago. I think the current equivalent is the Sewist 725s which honestly looks like someone took the 525s and made it look ugly and dated. Mine isn't a pretty machine but the 725s looks like it's from 1978.

And it's only in the last six months that I've even tried some of the features. Like the overcasting foot or finally gotten the automatic buttonhole to work! I could never get the buttonhole function to work, then a few months ago I got fed up with my crappy buttonholes and spent all night googling. I discovered that problems with the automatic buttonhole are common, but I also discovered lots of fixes, including one that worked! YAY!

Occasionally I consider replacing Naomi, usually when someone has shown me, or talked about, their flashy machine with twelve thousand stitches, sixty billion types of buttonhole, and a prettier case. But she works perfectly. (Partly because she had some parts replaced just a few years ago.) And other than decorative embroidery borders or patterns, she really does everything I could want. And I like doing hand embroidery.

So instead of replacing Naomi, I bought her some presents! A twin needle pintucking foot, that I can't try out because I still haven't bought a twin needle. A gathering foot, because I hate gathering. And THIS terrifying contraption . . .

The Janome Ultimate Ruffler! It can actually be used with most modern sewing machines, not just Janomes. And it makes frills and ruffles. You can adjust the size of the ruffle.

Fitting it to your machine for the first time is a bit fiddly. There's two screws you need to adjust to make sure the needle goes through the hole. I kept knocking it out of place as I was retightening the screws and had to start over. But once you've got it right, that's done forever and next time you can just snap it on like a presser foot.
There are two adjustments you can make to your ruffles.

This screw adjusts how much fabric is picked up in each pleat.

This lever controls how often it pleats. Every one, six, or twelve stitches. There's also a star setting that never pleats.

And here's my test run on a scrap piece of fabric. I kept the pleats the same size but it shows the difference between one, six, and twelve stitches between pleats. (And of course that will change as you change the stitch length too!)

With a little bit of practice, I can see this being incredibly useful. Right now, though, it is an absolutely terrifying Frankenstein contraption to use!


This beautiful beast

Is Odette the Overlocker. She's a Brother 2504D. When I bought her, I used an incredibly sophisticated selection process, that went rather like this "I have money. Which overlocker is half price at Spotlight?"  (Actually none were and I had to wait a few days for one to go on sale.) According to reviews I've read, this model is easy to use and even thread, straight out of the box, with no experience. I'm going to take a moment to psyche myself up, then I will test that theory.

I like the way this illustration shows which thread each bobbin does. It seems bobbin 3 is the only thread that will ever show if you're doing seams, which is good to know.

There's also this helpful threading illustration inside. And while threading these two bits is a fair bit more complicated than my sewing machine, the other two threads are so simple, I didn't even look at the instructions. I did have to go get my desk lamp though because I couldn't see to thread the needles and there is no automatic needle threader.

So, not feeling even a bit confident, I grabbed some scrap fabric and did a test run.

These are two different stitches and I can't remember which ones! I'm so helpful. I already have three complaints about this machine. 

The cord to the foot pedal is quite short. Yes. It reaches the floor. Just. There's no give at all and my table is not high. 

Two - the inbuilt light is not very bright and only lights up a very small area. 

Three - My eyesight sucks. I don't want to hand thread needles. I wish there was some sort of needle threader, but then again, if you can't thread a needle maybe you shouldn't be trusted with an overlocker anyway. I guess I'm going to have to start wearing my glasses for sewing, which I'm supposed to do any way.

Despite that, Odette is a beast! Holy cow! I already love her! She also has nets to go over the spools if you're using tangly thread and adaptors so you can use ordinary cotton reels instead of cones.

Finally there's this beautiful thing, which despite what it looks like, is not a crack pipe.

An airbrush! YAY!

And of course, you can't use an airbrush without

A compressor.

I actually found choosing an airbrush was hard. Most of the stuff I found online was either marketing nonsense (which I tend to ignore) or written by the sort of hobbyists that have their kit, it's the only thing they've ever tried and they're convinced everything else is rubbish. Ugh. Eventually I stumbled across this site Don's Airbrush Tips which may not be the most professional website but everything is explained simply and without bias. I've actually kept it bookmarked for troubleshooting later.

My airbrush is the Iwata Eclipse HP-CS, and my compressor.  .  . Ummm.  .  . Just says "Air Compressor" on the box and I don't remember what it is.

A little tip if you're ever looking to buy an airbrush. Don't just look in hobby shops. Airbrushes are used by hobbyists, artists, beauticians, cake decorators, tanning salons, a bunch of places. And I found that between these sorts of shops, the prices varied wildly. I bought mine from a candle making shop - of all the shops I could find, they had it cheapest. I found that places that made a big deal about being for "Airbrush Artists" were selling it for nearly TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS more! So I'm pretty glad I chose what I wanted, then searched for the name, instead of just googling "airbrush"!

I've been pretty excited to try this out but haven't been able to because the Giant Husband went all Darrin Stephens and "forbade" me to use it unless I wore a face mask, which I didn't have. I argued that I wasn't using anything fumey. He said I probably shouldn't be inhaling acrylic anyway. So, I meekly said ok, and didn't mention that I'd been spraying Mister Super Clear all week, without a face mask.

So yesterday I picked up some disposable dust masks and today I tried it out.

Nothing fancy. Paint, thinner, water, one of the kids medicine syringes for measuring out water, a little jar to mix in, and toothpicks to mix.

I diluted the paint down to the consistency of milk and, without even practising, painted the hair of this young lady.

And I'm not sure if it's what I was doing was easy (it was), or all the pre-reading I'd done on Don's site, or if I'm just some sort of natural but it wasn't hard. She's had two coats now and it's pretty even. I'll have a look in a day or two and decide if I think she needs a third coat.

It's probably going to be a while before I'm brave enough to attempt anything more complicated than blocks of colour (like this hair) or blushing but I'm going to have a lot of fun with this! I think the worst part is going to be cleaning it!

(Also if you're wondering. I forgot about the face mask when I did the first coat and now the back of my throat tastes like acrylic paint. So, yeah. Airbrushing needs a face mask even if it isn't fumey.)

Now after this insanely long post, hopefully I still have time to clean up all the mess I just made, before everyone gets home!