Reunion With an Old Friend

Frankly, I really don't have a whole lot to do these days. I've registered my car, got my South Carolina driver's license, filed our 2009 tax returns, done some legal business. I know when the house is done I'll have PLENTY to do sorting through all our stuff in storage, setting up the house and getting rid of the excess. In the meantime I'm metaphorically twiddling my thumbs.


I figured this would be a good time to do some sewing. I'm behind in making class samples of several of my quilt designs. I have, of course, sewing tools and fabric aplenty, but the thought of trying to find quilting paraphernalia among a couple hundred boxes was pretty daunting. Yes, as you might point out, I could have planned better and put together a kit of essentials in a clearly-marked box when I packed -- if I were as smart as you are. However, this is the real world, and one brown cardboard mover's box looks astonishingly like another. There was no way I could find the literal needles in the proverbial haystack.

So I hied myself off to the nearest fabric store. Now, coming from Southern California via Houston, I was used to a quilt store at every major intersection (between the nail salon and the dry cleaner). Here in rural South Carolina? Not so much. I did some web surfing and asked for recommendations on my quilting lists. The closest place is about 40 miles away. It's small but had a nice selection of fabrics, so I got the yardage I needed for my pattern Raising Cane. Then one day last week, as it turned out the day of the sleet and snow storm, I drove about 50 miles in the other direction to Hancock's Fabrics for some tools.

The last stumbling block to starting my project was a sewing machine. Luckily I had the foresight to mark my machine clearly so the movers would keep it upright; the box was easy to spot. With some undignified crawling and wriggling, I was able to drag the box out from under the dining room table where the movers had placed it for safekeeping. 

So here it is in all its glory. Not much to look at, right? But it really feels like an old friend.  Recently I met Janet through a quilting friend. When I asked her if she quilts, too, she said, "No, I don't have one of those machines with 2,000 fancy stitches." I chuckled because I don't, either. My machine has, well, one stitch. But it's a doozy. It's a good, accurate straight stitch. I guess you could say it's got two stitches, because if I press down that lever on the right side, it sews in reverse. My sewing machine is dependable, simple, strong, low-maintenance, dedicated. What more could one want in a friend?

My machine is like my friends. I'm lucky in my machine and I'm very lucky in my friends.