Fixing It Myself

Russ went to undergraduate engineering school as well as Masters in Electrical Engineering. He always talked about how few women were in his class and that his short-sighted professors went out of their way to make women feel out of place. It was such a sad bunch of chauvinism.  
Since I have started quilting in earnest I have been teaching myself how to do it. Quilting is a precision activity I have discovered. I have become more adept at making the quilt tops, but I wanted to try my hand at the actual quilting, that is making the sandwich of pieced top, batting and backing. Since I don’t own a sewing machine that is made to do that kind of quilting I needed to make something small. I decided that Christmas placemat might be a good way to experiment.  
I pieced this simple top and then realized that I did not have the necessary walking foot to quilt with my sewing machine. I went to look at Carter’s machine and lo and behold, her inexpensive machine from Costco had the fancy walking foot. I carried it down to my sweat shop and went to set it up. As I placed the foot down and tied to sew it would not work and I got an error code.  
Carefully I took the machine apart, cleaning out the gathered lint with a small brush. I put the machine back together and it worked perfectly. I thought about how many women are able to care for our household machines with little or no engineering training, yet how looked down upon those few women were in Russ’ class. It is such a shame that talent is over looked.

With my newly repaired second sewing machine I practiced doing the actual quilting and completed the first, be it very simple, place mat for my Christmas table. I look forward to creating a dozen different yet coordinating mats, all with more and more complicated quilting patterns, but first I have to engineer what they are going to look like.