BLESS ME QUILTERS

For I have sinned. As the owner of three sewing machines I should be satisfied, right? Of course there is the little Janome Jem for taking to classes, retreats etc. Great machine. My beloved Featherweight seems to have migrated to Los Angeles with one of my daughters. She should realize she and her sister would have bone to school naked were it not for that old pal of mine. It made my maternity clothes too. Then, the incident which motivated me to let go of said machine, I purchased a Viking 980 sometime around ’81. It was the first of the computerized home machines on the market. Well, there were some problems with it mostly because I bought it at a bargain place, Cloth World, and when I realized it needed a lot of adjusting they weren’t carrying them and so weren’t servicing them. That was a learning experience, or should have been. I wasn’t using it a whole lot, just some clothing for myself and working off work stress or rather, replacing one stress for another. After a decade a legitimate quilt shop opened not too far away and I took my first patch work lesson (that was the day after I retired!), got the machine adjusted and had to pay for what should have been the free class for new owners. It was then I found out I didn’t even have it threaded properly. When I tried to machine quilt with it I just couldn’t handle the quilt through the small work service so about 5.5 years ago when Juki came out with it’s first domestic machine with a wider bed made just for quilting with a high speed straight stitch. At the word of a member of my guild who was in love with hers, I ordered one on line as there were no dealers closer than Atlanta. Please refer to the aforementioned shoulda been learning experience The automatic threader has never worked and when I talked to the new dealer in Asheville recently he says none of them work. Recently I made Christmas stockings for the new step grands and pieced and quilted two sides of each but decided the seams joining them needed to be overcast so had to set up the Jem or Viking in another room and spent a fair amount of time running between two rooms. It was then I got to thinking about the fact that had I waited about 6 months I could have had a machine that does it all that has a wider bed. I’ve been on something of a spending mood lately which is rare for me. Well, you guessed it. I just dropped into one the quilt shops in Franklin and came out having ordered a Janome 6600. I played with the demo after I watched the guy who waited on me (he and wife are guild members) and it is wonderful. The dealer is 34 miles away and she’s in it for the long term and offers a year’s free membership in the Janome club and on site authorized maintenance. The whole seduction took about an hour. Now I can’t wait for the machine to arrive and, with a discount as a member of the guild and state sales tax I am very close to $2000 poorer. I’ll be 73 in March and by golly I want what I want NOW!

Anybody want to buy a Viking 980 or a Juki almost new? Even more important, anybody willing to support me when the money runs out?

Better get out and have my hike with my hairy roommate (a Springer spaniel which is about as old but slightly less decrepit than I) before the predicted rain.

Jane

I've posted this on the chat page but can't access it by any route I know of. There's a poltergeist on the chat page.