Disintegrating fabric

I have a doll, which I love dearly. My mother made her for me when I was little. So of course, I brought her to Germany with me. However, she is starting to move from "well-loved" to "falling apart" and I am getting a little bit worried. Her arms look like this:

The fabric is disintegrating horribly, but I can't think of a way to fix it! I have applied fray check dozens of times, but that hasn't helped. I think if I tried to patch or darn it, it would just pull away from the stitches, right? Does anyone have any ideas, or should I relegate poor Laura to a display item only?

Mending is sewing, right?

Well, probably not this mending! My grandfather is visiting us for Christmas break and he brought me a few mending projects to do. He tried to cut a change pocket out of the pocket of a tweed jacket and chopped a hole in the pocket lining. Also, he tried to get my 13 year old brother to cut through the stitching stitching the back pocket of his pants closed and my (well-meaning but sewingly moronic) brother chopped a slit in the pants pocket instead.

Mending tape to the rescue! It's nice to be able to do such a useful repair with so little trouble. And now I have a reputation as a sewing magician because I fixed them so fast. Haha.

Finished coat lining

Ooops! I never posted a picture of my finished coat lining. As you may recall, I needed to replace the lining on my coat. I did, in fact, finish it, I just forgot to post about it.

Here's the finished project:

This was really a functional project, and it functions well. It's not perfect by any means, but now I've learned for next time! My major mistake was that I cut one of the lining pieces out backwards, so it's wrong side out rather than right side out. However, since it's a lining, I didn't care enough to take the time to fix it!

My coat is perfectly functional, and I receive compliments on the lining on a fairly regular basis, so I'm satisfied!

Much needed repairs!

It's been pretty chilly around here lately. Not super cold, but enough that you do want a jacket. However, my jacket looks like this:

No lining! I have a lovely winter coat my parents bought me for my 18th birthday, which is well made and has served me well. But last winter, the lining started to tear out along every single seam. The pockets tore, and stuff fell out. So I tore out all the lining. In typical Sophie fashion, I then didn't put a new lining in. I did cut out new pattern pieces, and I did sew some of them together, but then when May came around and I moved out of the dorm, my winter coat was put in a bag and forgotten.

See how crumpled the lining is? At least I was able to find it! I've been working on putting it into the coat since Wednesday, in small chunks when I have time.

At the moment, I have the lining all sewn together, and one pocket is all the way in and the other is halfway in. I am hoping to finish this up tomorrow, and then devote the weekend to two pursuits: writing final papers and going to G Street Fabrics for the DC sewing blogger meetup!

It's not you, it's me. Or maybe her.

Apparently I kill sewing machines. I own two vintage sewing machines, for some reason I don't really remember. My first one, Marianne, developed some timing issues which I attributed to taking her on a long car trip in a car whose shocks were dying. Charlotte was doing fine until yesterday. Now she's having the same problem that Marianne was. The faceplate (I think that's the correct word?) is getting all scratched up around the hole where the needle goes in.

I'm getting frustrated. I seem to be terrible for sewing machines, but I don't know what I'm doing that's screwing them up. I wonder if this could be related to the fact that my little sister likes to use my sewing machine (without permission) and doesn't know how to thread it and usually uses the wrong kind of needle. Is that likely to have been causing a problem? Or have I just had bad luck? I don't know what causes timing issues, but I'm reluctant to go spend $150 to get it fixed if it's just going to happen again and again. On the other hand, I can't exactly keep sewing on a machine that works like this...

Argh. It hasn't been a good week. Any advice?

And so it begins...

...tech week!

There are not very many last minute fixes, but they are all on me. I am in charge of costumes from now until the last weekend of the show, because the other lady who was doing costumes with me is leaving to go on vacation. Command has shifted, and I am the boss. It's a little terrifying.

The things I have to do are:
1. Put elastic in the cuffs of Mercutio's shirt, which are way too wide.
2. Put a new button on Tybalt's doublet. Somehow his button snapped at the shank, so I have to find a new one and sew it on.
3. Fix the hem on Lady Capulet's slip. It was falling apart and shredding. I'll probably just serge it. No big deal.

Sewing machine troubles

So, sadly, I think it is time to admit something I've been trying to deny for quite a while. I think the timing on my sewing machine is off, and I think it may be time to take it in for a tune-up of some sort. The issue may not be timing exactly, but something is definitely wrong with this poor machine.

Exhibit A:
See those brown scratches around the hole where the needles goes in? I am pretty darn sure that those are scratches from where the needle scrapes the faceplate (is that what it's called?) instead of going into the hole cleanly. There were some of those scratches when I got the machine, but there are now more of them, and my needles do go dull pretty quickly.

Exhibit B:
This picture is much harder to see, because my camera doesn't do very good close-ups, but inside that red box is a little dark line. That dark line is a dent. That dent is new. I think the needle dented the bobbin case.

Now, I have several questions for you. First of all, does this seem like a timing issue to anyone else? My sewing machine has been getting crankier and crankier, and it also started working much more poorly after the trip back from Montreal (which may have been a bad idea, in retrospect). If you don't think it's a timing issue, what might it be?

And, the main question: Do I have any hope of fixing this myself? The affordable machine repair shop in the area closed, and I am looking at a bill of $90 just to look at the thing from the only other store in the area that I know of. I don't think I have any local readers, but any suggestions for a sewing machine repair shop in the DC area would be gratefully appreciated, especially if they're cheap. But, again, if I have any hope of fixing this myself, please let me know!

My newest sewing machine

I thought I'd do a post about each of my sewing machines. Let me brag for a minute--I have two sewing machines and a serger, and I paid a grand total of $0.00 for the three of them. My two machines came from FreeCycle, and my serger was given to me by a friend of my mother's.

The sewing machine I will introduce to you today is an old Sears Kenmore I just got on Friday. It *cough*doesn'tactuallyworkproperly*cough*, but I have high hopes that all it needs is a deep cleaning. This afternoon I plan to go out to CVS and buy some cleaning solvent.

One of the things I love about this machine is the table it came on. The table is a desk with a flip-top lid, and the sewing machine folds down inside and is covered with the lid. So the table can be a desk, as well as a sewing machine table.

If I buy the right accessories, which seem to be easily available off eBay, this machine is capable of doing a stretch stitch and a zigzag stitch, as well as sewing buttonholes. My other machine needs attachments which I can't find anywhere for these things. That's why I got this machine. It will broaden my sewing capabilities greatly--for example, I tend to avoid things with more than one buttonhole.(Of course, this assumes I can get the machine working properly....)

Enough words! How about some photos:




My apologies for the horrible photo quality. The machine and table are too heavy for me to carry upstairs alone, and as a result they are sitting in the living room, where the lighting is quite poor after sunset, when these photos were taken.