Ongoing

Ongoing in my struggle with my new Sweet Sixteen sewing machine.  Stitching with regular thread is a dream, fast, smooth, easy to manipulate free motion.  My issue is with heavier thread.  I wanted to stitch the piece below with something heavy and I picked up some Gutermann heavy duty polyester thread at my local Joann's because the color was what I wanted.   I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was having trouble getting the tension to cooperate, and my thread was either breaking, or looping, no in between.  It ended up back in the shop when I threw the timing off.  I bought an upper thread tension guide from Superior,  I bought a horizontal thread holder for the machine, I even bought an extra bobbin case thinking I would need to mess with that.  When I got the machine back I used the tension guide and the horizontal thread holder and achieved nirvana in stitching.  For a while.  Then I noticed the thread would periodically come loose from the tension discs and I'd be looping again.  Since I was almost done stitching this, I kept rethreading and moving on.  Then I heard the ominous clunking noise that told me I had thread stuck in the bobbin case again,  and sure enough I threw the timing out again.  I called the company, they suggested moving one of the thread guides over so the thread goes through the discs vertically instead of at an angle.  Back to the sewing shop we went, and I have ended up finishing the stitching on this by hand.

I am frustrated, because I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or something's wrong with the machine.  When I pick it up this time, I'm going to sit in the repair shop and stitch with the heavy duty thread and see if they can figure it out.  

With better news, my mom celebrated her 89th birthday recently, and her she is with her great granddaughter Riley, who is 10 months.

Line

Our oldest daughter Julie is a part time artist and full time govt. employee.  She moved recently to Big Sur and rents a place with her boyfriend on the Edward Weston compound.  It's a small place, around 800 sq. feet, with a stream and a trout pond out back.  We were finally up there visiting a few weeks ago, and it made me so happy to see her so happy.  I forgot my camera when we visited,

 but a few days ago we were at LACMA and saw an Edward Weston exhibit.  I took a few photos here, and they are really bad, but I was so captivated by the lines in his work.

Seeing a bell pepper next to a nude, with similar lines just reminded me of how important it is

to pay attention to the simplest basic design principles.  Switching subjects, below is my new sewing machine, with the unfortunate name of Sweet Sixteen, because of the 16 inch base.  You stitch from the front end of the machine, like a long arm, and it only does free motion, and it stitches really, really fast.

This bobbin winder looks very intimidating, but it's actually simple, and the bobbin holds lots of thread, so your not changing it too often.

I feel like it's back to basics with this machine, no fancy stitches to choose from, no needle left or right, it's perfect for me.