My sewing table at home - the imfamous Rockler!

The afore mentioned Singer #42 cabinet is headed for our house on Lake Wallenpaupack. I have my real sewing room in my house in Virginia. That's, of course, where most of my sewing takes place.

The original dilemma I had was with the compact space I have here and what to do with a newly aquired serger. I saw some Horn cabinets that looks like they might do the trick but they were expensive and frankly a bit cheesy looking. The solid wood ones were prohibitive.

My Father in Law is a wonderful woodworker. He does this as a hobby but makes absolutely beautiful furniture. I showed him the picture of the Horn and he then went out and found plans from Rockler that were even better than the Horn one I was looking at. He asked me what wood and I asked for cherry. This is how it looks open:

It was originally constructed for my Bernina 1010 but then I retrofitted it for my Artista 165E and later my Artista 630E (that's what's in it now). The arm holds my Bernina 1300MDC serger nicely. All I have to do is swing the chair and I can get to each of them quickly. He also made me the corresponding inserts for the various machines. This is how it looks closed:

After he finished he asked me what did I want to do with the leftover wood. Well, a matching bookcase of course:

Needless to say I spend a lot of happy sewing hours at this table!

Tale of two Singers

I'm very much a Bernina person but I have two wonderful Singers. The big guy is a 1938 Singer 201-2 my Mom got when she combined a birthday, Christmas and graduation from Junior High in 1942. This was a very gently used machine and came in a very handsome Queen Anne style cabinet. It's still in the very handsome cabinet.  I'm happy to have it grace my upstairs hallway and I do bring it out when I want a very quiet wonderful straight stitch. Since this is the machine I learned to sew on I fell like I'm sewing with a good friend.

The Featherweight 221 dates to 1946 and came from a very good deal on Ebay. It's in pretty good shape (although the people who had it did not baby it as much as we did the 201-2) and I might at some point want to restore it to perfect. Not sure though. Thanks to Mike at the Quilt Patch in VA it runs beautifully!

One of the cool things is they both have the nice scrolly faceplate so they really look like siblings!

And they take the same attachments and feet! I just love the two machines when I feeling truly vintage!

Bernina Design Skin and the curious bird....

Bernina has arranged with Design Skins to make skins for the Activa series and the Artista 635. I happen to have an Activa 220 which is my travel and class machine. I thought it would be fun to design a skin and Bailey would be with in spirit. Needless to say when she was it she was really curious about the machine! But then, she's an Amazon parrot so curiosity is her nature.

 

Design Skins are a company in Germany. They got the first one wrong - it had a dark brown background. I emailed them and in just a few hours they answered back saying it was being redone and I would recieve it shortly. I'm so impressed I think I might need a skin for my laptop cover! Now that's customer service!

In the name of organization

I've always found a bulletin board is a great thing to have in a sewing room. I like to keep it above the sewing table so I have a place for pattern pieces, drawings, ideas and samples. For years I had a plain one from an office store but I decided I wanted one more like a "work of art".

I was looking for a frame not necessarily in great shape for the frame. I would have done the "shabby chic" approach but I found a solid wood one in great shape at a thrift shop in Urbana, VA. They also had a slightly beat up cork board. Total sale was $12.

The frame had an off-white inner boarder but that was remedied with some colorful ribbon from Joann Fabric. I covered the board with some Project Runway quilt fabric with a sewing motif. Some spray adhesive took care of attaching that. I added a ruler to the bottom edge and found these very cool push pins from Push Pins and Fabric Cork Boards. So very useful and very decorative.