The Labours of Kangaroo.

My project has been in the making for a long time. I'll credit that. I found a batch of sample curtain swatches in a dumpster...we call iit an industrial bin...a couple of years ago, maybe more...I might even have blipped that I was dismantling them off their showroom hangers and sewing squares together by hand tacking, painstaking the word is given sticky glue has to be trimmed off etcet...

Meantime, a recent historical epoch, I bought a sewing machine from the post office.

Australia Post is like a chemist (pharmacy, drug store) these days making its best buck by merchandising anything legal that will sell to the masses.

I honestly thought the machine when I first gave it a test run would be not the least use. I even thought it was comical to a fly on the wall watching me diving to upright it as it (soo lightweight) toppled off balance...or yesterday that it ran off on its own chattering one heart stopping moment. However by accident re it showing a mind of its own I had jammed the operating foot pedal n a locked position by pushing it forward against the lower edge of a shelf.

Yes, before I saw what I'd done I grabbed the power cord and pulled it out of the machine to stop the robot, my eyes like saucers (my mind widdershins about the evils of modern capitalism).

Yes, laugh as I bare my secret life of incompetence.

Trimmed, washed, tacked together and /or ironed simply flat, packed and transported to the new residence the swatches, they/it is in a seachange, a transition phase, now a sampler of machine stitching as, having learned to handle and coordinate machine and fabric without the machine toppling, I then made every mistake possible ie beginning the process day before yesterday of finishing 'something'.

It was once going to be a table cloth, but I am unsure it will lie flat. Never mind. I'll soldier on (creatively speaking). Bit like riding a bicycle sewing. So far not too bad but hey, initial skirmishes ended in confrontation I had to... read the manual.

Well written manual with a useful index. Praise to the writer, support staff and publisher of the Operation Manual for the Brother JS 1400...a work of creative accomplishment even printed on non-glossy paper.

I ought to go buy some shares now in the company. Naaaah. Kidding.

Post Script; I thought I might blip a reel of cotton. However...not till after (so excited was I to get started) I tore the lovely cellophane and with it the imprinted label s on it off the two retro reels of jumbo Embassy 'Machine Cotton' ...bought at the recent church jumble sale for 20 cents each. Gems from days when all sewing thread was cotton, not polyester. Here we have the cotton in a plain Zig-zag stitch...

...where I am creating a strip 'patch' to disguise I messed up the tension and stich length attempting to machine-join the swatches by Satin Zig-zagging over the hand tacked join between them, on the right side of the fabric ie instead of unpicking the square into its original three panels and runing straight stitching across the hand tacked swatches on their inside seam and the same lengthwise of the panels to rejoin them.

Honestly speaking using a Satin Zig-zag stitch on the outside (right or used side) as alternative to straight machine stiching the hand tacked seams on their inside was a broad and ambitious brush stroke of faulty genius.

As you were those of you blippers not the least interested in the difference between a Plain Zig-zag and a Satin Zig-zag stitch. Thank you for dropping by. See you soon at yours.