Singer Style-O-Matic 328: No Longer For Sale

I have 3 sewing machines that do virtually the same things. Time to cull the herd. This vintage workhorse is SOLD. The buttonholer is still available for $10 (comes with the correct throat plate cover for straight shank vertical feed machines).

Lovely vintage sewing machine. In extremely good shape for its age. Absolutely no rust. Runs strong. It is clean, lubed and oiled. Ready for a new home. For those of you new to sewing or who are looking for a sturdy well built machine that will last forever, this is for you. These older Singers are incredibly well built. Virtually indestructible. Very easy to thread, use and maintain. This machine is all metal...through and through. No plastic parts to crack, break or yellow. The 328 has the following features: 

straight stitch
zig-zag
reverse
9 pattern cams for decorative stitching (one is loaded in the machine)
3 needle positions
2 needle stitching
easy threading
easy bobbin winding
easy to oil

You will receive everything shown except for the buttonholer which is available for an additional $10. The machine comes with one bobbin and a multi-purpose foot. It takes standard Singer bobbins and accessories for straight shanked machines which are readily available. Can easily be mounted into a Singer cabinet or used as is, on a table or desk. The foot pedal and cord are in pristine condition.

The buttonholer includes the correct throat plate cover for use with this vertical feed machine. It includes all of the 5 buttonhole templates (one is loaded in the buttonholer). I can email PDF copies of the manuals for both the 328 machine and the buttonholer.

I'm Quilting!

I am excited to finally be underway. Elmer's glue stick worked great for basting the hearts to the white blocks.

I then ironed some stabilizer to the block backs and set about using a satin stitch to applique the hearts to the blocks. Applique is not my favorite thing but I finally got the hang of it on the 5th block (which is featured at the beginning of this post). I used a tear-away stabilizer and have removed it from all but that 5th block, which is the one I intend to monogram Reggie's initial on. Then it was time to assemble all those triangles into blocks. I confess to having a terrible time with this quilting business. My glasses prescription is long out of date and I can't see worth a damn. I plan to purchase a new pair of glasses with my tax return. Maybe then I'll be more precise in my cutting and piecing. One can hope, right? In the meantime I will muddle along, with my blind self.  I got a bit cocky and decided to try chaining the triangle pairs together. It looks good...

...but somehow I still managed to mess up and had to have a date with Mr. Seam Ripper. I'll get it, eventually. In spite of being blind as a bat, and not very bright, I have managed to get this far.

I'm pleased as punch. Tomorrow I'll try to figure out the monogrammer, and then sew those blocks together. My 600E has taken the place of honor in the cabinet.

She is a lovely girl and I'm still puzzled as to why her previous owner let her go so cheaply? I was expecting her to have some major issues. Tonight I think I may have hit upon why the fellow didn't think she was worth much. She's finicky about her bobbins. Extremely so. She came with about 10 bobbins, half of which unscrew and have white bottoms (like the one on the left) and half of which do not unscrew and are clear (like the one on the right, below).

You notice that the clear one has thread on it, and the white bottomed one does not? Well, I have TRIED to get her to wind onto those white bobbins....but she absolutely refuses. I'm thinking maybe the previous owner tried to get her to wind a bobbin, using only the white bobbins, and thought she was broken. Nope. She just doesn't like those particular bobbins. Which leaves me with only 5 bobbins she does like. I just ordered 10 bobbins from Ebay, for $5.99. I have my fingers crossed she'll like them. If so, I'll go buy about 20 more. I prefer to have LOTS of bobbins.

Finally Starting A Quilt

Today I worked up the nerve to start cutting out the pieces for my first quilt. I had never used a rotary cutter or cutting mat before. I thought if I used a tissue paper pattern for the first quilt it would make more sense to me, as that is what I'm familiar with. But I quickly realized it is much easier to just measure the size of the piece needed and use the rotary cutter and a ruler to cut the fabric to the desired dimensions. Here are the pieces for Reggie's quilt, all cut and ready to sew.

A close-up of the paw and bones print.

I bought the wrong kind of stabilizer so now I need to figure out how to anchor the hearts to the white squares so I can applique them. And I still haven't figured out how to use my monogrammer. But tomorrow I'll begin assembling the blocks. You need to do a lot of ironing while quilting. I don't have enough room to set up an ironing board in my tiny sewing room so have commandeered the hallway as my ironing space.

The mailman brought me some more goodies today. 

6 more quilting and sewing books...

And some face dirt (mineral make-up).

Everyday Minerals had a "free shipping" week and I stocked up. The 4 eye shadows and the little brush were also freebies. I love this make-up line. It's affordable, good for your skin and they always have some kind of special running.

Icicles On The Chicken Coop

We finally got some wintry weather. It's mid-January and this is our first snow of the season. It started threatening to snow on Saturday, and then really got serious about it Sunday. Now it's Monday and the snow is still coming down. But the real snowstorm isn't supposed to hit until late Tuesday or early Wednesday. These pictures were taken early this morning. You can see there's even a tiny icicle on the chicken house. The chickens don't seem to mind the cold. In fact Shirley, the black star, has decided the dead of winter is the perfect time to molt. Poor bees. I'm sure they're all snuggled up. Doesn't the apple tree look pretty with its dusting of snow?

Jo-Ann's Booty

This morning I made a bee-line for Jo-Ann fabrics. I needed to spend at least $50 in order to get the coveted super saver card (30% off everything, including sale items) that will be good for next week. I had my shopping list ready; brown fabric for the husbeast's work shop curtains, serger thread and quilting thread, a bunch of safety pins for quilting, some stabilizer for applique and more rotary cutting tools. Here is what I brought home:

They also had their remnants marked 70% off so I bought 3 different colors of fleece fabric, for hat linings, and a couple of pieces of print fabrics (cotton and linen) which will probably become lining for hand woven bags. I did receive that 30% off coupon, so will head back next week to buy the rest of the items needed for the king sized quilt for our master bedroom.

Books are Good. FREE Books are Better!

Between Craigslist, Freecycle and Ravelry, I have gone from having very little fabric or sewing books....to having an impressive fabric stash and a pretty sweet sewing library. There are great items out there, just looking for a new home. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open.  The old saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure," is so true. Here are some new-to-me treasures.

These first 4 books and the pile of fabric were Ravelry trades. For the cost of postage I was able to turn yarn and knitting books into fabric and sewing books. The fabrics are really cute. Inspired by 1930's era prints. They'll be great for quilting.

I search Craigslist many times a day and yesterday, early afternoon, I spied an ad for FREE sewing books. A huge stack. Free to the first person to inquire. Guess who was first? A quick drive to Lakewood (during which time it decided to snow like crazy) and I added these gems to the library.

Lots of helpful sewing wisdom from this familiar guru.

Books on tailoring and working with fabrics.

Another quilt book.

But the real jewel in the stack was this. 

How to make your own sewing patterns. 

Remember this cross-stitch kit I picked up at the thrift store? Remember how I commented it would be easy? Man, was I wrong. Yes, the image is stamped on the Aida cloth. But there are multiple pages of charts and stitching patterns.

It will be quite a challenge. It took me over an hour to sort through the pile of floss. And I'm still not 100% sure I have the colors matched with their names. The descriptions were rather vague and could describe more than one of the colors. I sorted them, to the best of my ability, on a piece of cardboard. Wish me luck!

Some Home Movies

Not a whole lot happening here. I'm washing up fabric, getting ready to start little quilts for Reggie and Singha. I need to take out the Singer 600E and get it cleaned and ready for action. I hope to be able to monogram their initials into the center squares of the quilts. I'm also making a sewing wish-list so I can descend on Jo-Ann Fabrics first thing Sunday morning. Jo-Ann is my new best friend. The husbeast has requested I make him some more curtains for his basement work area. And I need a few more items for my quilt projects; thread, batting, fusible web, lots of safety pins....that sort of thing. Today I made some t-bone steaks for dinner. One of the bones looked so nice I decided to give Reggie a treat. He's over 4 years old and has never had a bone, before. The bone was almost as big as he is.

He worked on that thing for over an hour. Now he's napping. I think it wore him out. I also took a few videos of him opening his Christmas presents. The second one is of him playing with one of his new toys. I don't think any of my kids love Christmas as much as Reggie does.