Sewing Machines: An Accounting

I spent Saturday getting the Ma's serger up and running. We had taken it in to the shop months and months ago. The repair man was appalled. "You messed up the programming, which you shouldn't be able to do. How did you do that!?" We hadn't touched it since bringing it home.

(Is anyone surprised that we were able to mess up something you aren't supposed to be able to mess up?)

I gave myself a sunburn reading the manual. There were a couple of parts I didn't understand and reread several times. I forgot to notice how long I'd been in the sun.

Giving up all hope of coming to an understanding, I threw Ma in the car along with my trusty serger manual and we headed to the Bernina dealer. I showed the sweet lady my confusing points. She was just as confused as I. I gave up asking for help. It turned out okay. I was able to do what I needed to and it was while I was sewing that I had an epiphany about the confusing parts. There's still one thing in particular I do not understand. (The line means to thread the needle, the dot means to pull out the needle and unthread it. So, the dot on top of the line means . . . that you both need a threaded needle and no needle that is not threaded??)

I had to do some rearranging to get the cutting station set up. Currently, the only usable machine in the sewing room is the serger. That means we have access to one quarter of our machines.

We have:

• a standard bernina sewing machine, a couple of decades old at least
• another standard bernina sewing machine, maybe a decade and a half old (belonging to me)
• a bernina sewing machine that can be an embroider machine, half a decade old
• a serger that does both an overlock stitch and a cover stitch

These machines used to be shared among three of us: me, the Ma, and the Little Sister.

The Little Sister has inherited a sewing machine from her husband's grandmother. That means those four machines are shared between two people. May I point out that there are two standard sewing machines for two people, which makes perfect sense, and the other two have distinct purposes. This means we can both be in there embroidering, sewing, and serging at the same time. We're almost never in each other's way.

We're contemplating purchasing another machine. Most sergers can't switch between the overlock stitch and the cover stitch. Setting up your machine to do one after it's been doing another takes a good twenty minutes, and that's if you're fast. The Bernina dealer has a supply of sergers that just came back from the schools. They are newer, easier to use, and inexpensive. They don't do the cover stitch. Our solution? Set up our current serger to do the cover stitch and leave it as a coverstitch machine. Purchase the new model just come back from the schools to be our serger.

Clearly, two women need five sewing machines.

When we do things, we do them in a big way.