Creating a Sampler

How many times have you gone to a class and had to admit that you don't know if your machine does certain stitches, or just been playing around with the various buttons on your sewing machine and had an 'aha, I didn't know it did that' moment?

  I have seen many over the years buy sewing machines and use them for just the basics when often they can do so much more.  Because of that, when I bought my last machine, my lovely little Pfaff, I made a point of going through the instruction book and having a go at all the stitches the book said the machine did.   I even created a 'ready size' panel for blanket stitch and zig-zag  (stitches I use frequently),showing differing widths and heights, so that I could just look at it and know straight away what size I wanted to use.

On Monday my neighbour and friend Linda, who also happens to be a quilter (yeah) took ownership of a fabulous brand spanking new Pfaff machine. OMG, this machine has all sorts of interesting bits and bobs and helping her open the two boxes that everything came in was a real thrill (even if I was going slightly green at the time).  Poor Linda, she just looked so overwhelmed - so much STUFF!!! We had pre planned a day when she would go through the new instruction book and create a 'sampler' of all the stitches her new toy could create.  

Today was the day that the sampler was to be made and we decided to have a bit of a Pfaff challenge - I mean it's been a few years since I went through my instruction book so I took on the challenge to revisit all my babies stitches.  There were many I had forgotten about and quite a few I must remember to use, so the revisit has been well and truly worth it.

We spent about 4 or 5 hours just playing around the book and sewing samples, in the end we had quite a collection of 'pages' for our sampler books and yes we did get a bit competitive about the variety of stitches and poor Sue (another Wednesday quilter) became the voice of a referee as we zoomed our way through the stitches. I have to admit Linda and her new 'toy' won hands down - she has sooooo many stitches plus all of the embroidery patterns that she is yet to try.

So after all of that I never did work on any quilt, nor did I finish any project but I do think Linda and myself did something a lot more useful - we got to know our machines, the work horses of our craft - and had some fun while doing it.

I hope you have had a good day too

hugs