Monday, September 3, 2007

Labor Day Project: Roman Shades

I've been planning these for a long time. It took me months to decide on a fabric. Decisiveness isn't always one of my strengths. It turned into more of a project than I thought. But, they are done and I am really pleased!

It's never a good sign when a project starts like this....


When I sat down to sew the shades today, the feed dogs wouldn't come up. Feed dogs....never given the oddly named things much thought, but now I hate them. Hate them.

As long as I've waited to make these shades, I wasn't giving up without a fight. Of course I didn't want to wait to take the thing in to the sewing machine repair shop. So I got out a screwdriver and tried to take the thing apart. My husband laughed while he was watching tv from his spot on the sofa. He wanted no part of taking this thing apart. He told me if something went wrong I would just blame him. He was probably right.

I think the mean folks at Singer must make taking these things apart hard on pupose. Maybe to prevent people, like me, who are clueless about the inner workings of a sewing machine from making matters worse. Well I didn't heed their warning. It took me over 40 minutes just to take it apart. But once I did, I found one of the springs had come loose, fixed it and was back in business. I put this machine back together, but discovered an extra, unknown piece. Never good. So back apart it came. Found the home for the mystery piece, but it back together...and....when I plugged it back it, the thing even worked!!

Ha, my dad would be so proud. I don't think there was a weekend of my childhood that he didn't have some appliance in pieces on the kitchen floor.

So after a long day of sewing (not my best skill) they are done!

Of course I couldn't wait until there was better lighting in my kitchen...so the pictures suck, but I couldn't wait until tomorrow morning for better light.


*Edited to add a picture - this is this morning with the morning light coming through the windows.

3 comments:

Mary Ann said...

They are beautiful Nora. I absolutely love that fabric!

Corey~living and loving said...

ooooooooooooo very cool! I am impressed. NOt only with the shades, but your fixing the sewing machine. way to go! :)

Waseem said...

Good project....look so smart in colour....very impressive.

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