The Beast

      Life contains beasts in our lives.  Feelings, situations, and objects in our life that hold difficulty.  I have a number of them circling around me.  One beast obviously is the beast of mourning my son.  This beast and a few others I am not ready to discuss.  Feelings and situations are tough to talk about; I will leave those for another day.  Instead, I will talk about an object.

When my mother died, she left  four sewing machines.  A friend asked for her ancient machine which I was happy to give to her.  One we put in the rummage sale.  No one bought it.  My cousin asked about it, so I gave it to her.  The machine was almost ancient.  The other two I kept for myself.  The first, an inexpensive, lightweight Singer, is the machine I have been using for the past couple of months.  There are no bells and whistles on this machine, straightforward and very simple.  The last machine, well let’s just say, I have been avoiding the beast.  One look at the price tag scared the crap out of me.  This thing has a computer in it.  Uff da.

 

In November, I brought the beast out of the closet to look at and contemplate.  When Michel died, I put it back in the writing room to get it out of the way of all the company that came in waves.  Well, two weeks ago, my left arm ached when I woke up.  Tying knots in quilts flared my autoimmune issues.  I needed to rest for a day and not tie so many knots.  The time off from projects was the perfect opportunity to learn about the machine.

I couldn’t find many YouTube videos about the Elna Pro Quilter’s Dream.  One woman did have a video on her regular Elna that gave me the courage to turn mine on.  I grabbed the instruction manual and took a good thirty minutes just figuring out all the feet for the bloody beast.  Finally, I grabbed some strips of fabric and began sewing.  Oh, what a dream!!!  The fabric stays straight.  There is a speed control on the foot pedal.  Amazing.  I hummed away for a good couple of days just sewing fabric together.

This last week, I became braver.  I started playing with the embroidery options.  I grabbed the first quilt square I ever sewed and decided to quilt that into a wall hanging on the beast.  What fun.  I programmed the machine to sew little flowers.  I also used one of the vine leaf options to put a little more detail into the project.  I had fun.

 

Now, to use up all of Mom’s pieces and parts, I have a lot of big quilts that I will need to either quilt or tie.  I like the tying options for a lot of reasons.  First, the distance between the knots keeps the quilt fluffy instead of stiff.  Also, trying to maneuver all that fabric around in a sewing machine is complicated and bulky.  If I go to a long arm shop, I will be spending a lot of money to rent a machine.  I mean, I don’t mind on a special project, but the majority of what I will be doing is scrap quilts.  I needed a solution.  I found one.  On my second twin block quilt, I embroidered little designs where I would have put a knot.  I made a few mistakes and I chose a design that went crazy from time to time, but I like the results just the same. 

 

I will continue to work on this technique along with the stitch in the ditch on strip quilts.  I learned a lot in the last two weeks about the beast.  I have a bunch more to learn, but we have begun the taming process.  I am excited to continue with all the projects set before me.  Together the beast and I will carry on a long family tradition.  Well, at least I know Grandma Nixon, Jerry’s Grandma Richard, Aunt Ellen, and Mom have done quilting.  I will continue.