I just had to share the latest addition to my humble home with you all. I had been talking with my friend Kyla, not that long ago, and expressed to her that I was looking for a vintage treadle, or hand crank sewing machine so that I could teach the kids on a simpler and slower machine as they have both expressed interest in creating with my electric machine but which goes like a bat out of hell if you're not careful with her.
Well, it wasn't but a week or so later and Kyla texted me that she had seen one at our local Thrift store! What are the odds? Yay Kyla!
I hustled down there as soon as I was off work and found this gorgeous little beauty!
Squealing with delight, I purchased her on the spot and brought her home.
Then promptly broke the old, and original, leather drive band for her while I was trying her out.
Poop.
Ok, I thought, I can fix this ... I can sew and it's made of leather so how hard can it be to jimmy-rig something?
For the record, old leather is really, really, really hard to sew through. But with a little ingenuity, a sturdy needle and a rather large rock, it can be done!
So banded together with some strong bamboo thread I got her all together and decided that perhaps I should make my first project something with simple, and probably straight lines in it.
I know! My little miss needed a roll wrap for her new pencil crayons so that we can keep them together, portable and hopefully safe from rolling off the table and breaking all the colour inside to smithereens!
Digging around in my stash I found a lovely print from Michael Miller which would work and an old courderoy shirt from the Mr. which I could cut up, finally finding some old ties that I had cut off a pretty cotton dress forever ago which would work for the ties. Cotton thread, check! Ok, with all my goodies in hand I set out to play with my new machine :)
After some fanagaling, and oh, that's how you change the tension and whoops, when you treadle like that it kind of goes backwards, (and much seam ripping!) I slowly began to get the hang of it. She sews effortlessly, beautifully (once I figured out the tension) and makes this lovely rhythmic soft clickety sound as she goes that becomes quite peaceful and soothing as you go along.
I was thoroughly enjoying my project and even though the lines didn't end up being all that straight in the end, my wee little recipient was still pleased as punch to have something to hold all her precious pencil crayons in and quite merrily began toting them around the house with her sketchbook.
Win-win :)
And all sewn without electricity, and with mostly upcycled items. That felt really good too!
Already looking forward to my next project on her, perhaps some sewn bookmarks with the kids? My amazing boy has already asked to try his hand at sewing something on her! Yay!
Thanks to whomever donated her to the Thrift store, and my dear friend Kyla for finding her for me - I can see we have many, many happy sewing years ahead together :)
xo nikki
