Hello. Did you think I'd been abducted by aliens? No such luck, life's just been too busy/mundane to blog about.
I do want to show you a new addition to the house, though:
ain't she a beaut!
It's a Singer 127 Treadle sewing machine. I mistakenly told you in this blog post that one of my other sewing machines was a Singer 128 in a coffin case, not so, it's a 27 in a bentwood case. This machine is the non-electric variation on that same machine, and with fabulous sphinx decals. I've been learning lots and lots about identifying old machines.
I'm in the process of getting this machine up and running. It's required a bit of tinkering and I still can't get the stop motion wheel to properly disengage, but I plan to keep fiddling with it before I give up and take it in to the repair shop. There are so few parts on these old machines that I can't believe it can be anything other than straight forward. The treadle stand for this machine had a top that was in fairly bad shape which I painted cream to match the kitchen trim and it sits now under a mirror by the back door. I find the sound of the moving treadle very comforting. I must have been a little factory worker in a former life.
Over the last few months a friend and I have been working on starting a button collector's club here in the city. So far, we've had two meetings and we couldn't have hoped to find a better group of people - diverse and good-humoured. At the last meeting I gave a talk on vegetable ivory buttons (doesn't that sound impressive? Don't be fooled, it was only a half page of notes - in very large handwriting.) I also brought homemade shortbread buttons...
Scrumptious!
I brought along the button tree Elly and I had made the week-end before the meeting.
We made this for Elly, to co-ordinate with her peacock-coloured Christmas theme using the directions found here. It's very easy, though time consuming. I foolishly bought the largest Styrofoam cone Michael's had, and it ended up being a lot of buttons and pins. The pins were purchased at the dollar store, and good thing, because I think we used more than 300. The ladies at the button meeting all agreed it was a great idea for the many, many mass produced plastic buttons one can accumulate without realising.
As party favours (meeting favours?) I made some button Christmas ornaments.
Another easy, peasy project. Clear glass ornaments were purchased from Michael's, I chose the heart-shaped set, and filled with colour co-ordinated plastic buttons small enough to fit through the ornament top.
It's beginning to look a lot like buttons, I mean Christmas!
