loving my overlocker

A few months ago a friend very kindly gave me an overlocker which belonged to her late Mum. I was thrilled as its something I'd always wanted but wouldn't have lashed out on myself.

It has been sitting waiting for me to have time to tackle it, as it all looked rather daunting, especially when you open the doors and peer into its innards!

I found a really helpful tutorial on youtube, featuring this very machine and also featuring lots of Trendy Young People with massive 1990's hairdos and stretchy neon coloured clothing, disporting themselves to the sounds of the Pet Shop Boys or similar. You can find just about anything on youtube, marvellous!

After hoovering out all the fluff, the threading process involved special long tweezers, standing on your head and peering into the workings, and quite a bit of swearing, although the lady on youtube didn't do any of these things, but remained calm and unruffled, with her shell pink nail varnish and soothing tones.

I wasn't convinced I was doing it right, however, as I couldn't get it to sew and I was thinking I might have to take it to be serviced/fixed...

And then help arrived in the form of a two-hour 'love your overlocker' session at Sew Creative in Petersfield:

http://sewcreative.org.uk/

Six of us arrived with our machines, five ladies who had been given shiny new ones, and me with my heavy beast (Mr P had to carry it in for me) which I thought might not work, but the lovely Sharon had soon sorted out my glitches with the threading (the rabbit goes round the tree, down the hole, oh why didn't I pay attention to learning knots in the brownies before I was expelled...?) and off it went! The four different feeds are colour coded and she had the brilliant idea of threading our machines with the right coloured threads so you could see what was what.

So now I can overlock anything, as long as its rainbow coloured... although the good news is that having threaded it once you can just join another reel of thread to the existing ones and gently pull it through to change the colour!

The world of stretchy knits will be my lobster, tee shirts! Pants! Boob tubes! (ooh err maybe not) Jogging bottoms for Mr P to do yoga in! I have already been eyeing up the delicious jersey fabrics at the Eternal Maker so watch this space...

I'm not sure where the time has gone since Christmas, but I have been keeping up the cultural outings. I recently went with a friend to the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey which is a fascinating part of London, apparently the centre for the leather and glove-making trade in the past. This horse and his twin were above what is now a car repair garage, but was once a stable. The happy mechanic showed us that it hadn't changed inside, apart from the introduction of piles of greasy car parts.

The knitwear exhibition at the museum was less interesting than we had expected, although the wacky looking building (mustard! pink! sparkly floors with stars in them!) which was founded by Zandra Rhodes is always worth a visit, and a very nice lunch may be had in the cafe.

After lunch we walked along past St Thomas's Hospital and spotted this astonishing skull hanging in the foyer of the Old Operating Theatre Museum. It is the oldest operating theatre in Europe, dating from the days when a surgeon would saw a leg off without anaesthetic watched by the crowd around the galleries. A definite place for our next London visit!

I have also become part of a new quilting/ sewing group, and have to make a nine inch block to take to our second meeting next month. Cunningly I am using the log cabin squares I made before Christmas- just the binding to finish, and I hope nobody notices its a bit bigger than nine inches....

I'm also hoping to have this quilt finished by then- Molly says it will be a lot more cuddly once its quilted to the backing!

... and a New Year's promise to myself to post here more frequently- even if nobody else is reading it, I like the diary of projects finished and unfinished.