Mean Pea Green Machine

Two blogs in one day! I'm on a roll, and I've been wanting to blog this for over a month. So since I'm sitting here, I'll just do it!

About 150 bags into my 300-bag project, my beautiful Bernina sewing machine got all x*3$%@z?-ed up. You know how that happens? My Bernina is THE most expensive thing I own--other than our house and cars. It's a great machine, but it wasn't really meant to sew through 6 layers of heavy upholstery-weight material. Yes, I was abusing it.

So, I took it to my trusty sewing machine repair shop (Parkside Sewing Center in Santa Rosa, CA--I highly recommend it!), and Jim told me that it would take SIX WEEKS for him to get to it. Yikes. By then, the fashion show would be upon me! But I couldn't trust anybody else to fix my beautiful Bernina, so I left it there with him, realizing I had to go to PLAN B (whatever that was).

I started looking online for industrial strength sewing machines because I obviously needed something that could sew through these thick layers I would be subjecting it to. I happened upon an Ebay seller who lived within 30 minutes from me, a fantastic woman named Kate, who repairs old Singer machines! I called her on a Saturday morning, told her my predicament, and she graciously allowed me to come to her house that same day. She told me to bring some of my fabrics and said we would try all the machines in her house to see which one could sew through all those layers.

And voila! This adorable, 50-year-old Singer was the mightiest of all!

It is a Singer 185K from 1959. It goes through all those layers like a knife through room-temperature butter. And best of all, it's so darned CUTE! I love the pea green retro color and styling. It even has its own matching pea green case!

I was able to breeze through the other 150 bags with this dandy machine. Now, I have my Bernina back from the shop (a couple weeks early even!), and I'm back in business.