Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Tag: sewing machine

  • Wings

    Wings

    In 2024 saw big birthdays for three members of my family, myself included. I never made myself anything, but for the other two members, I wanted to make something special for each of them. It is in the last few years that I have come back to my hand embroidery, once I got the diploma in hand embroidery at the Centre of Excellence, it opened the door for me to successfully secure my teaching position at Islington Council within the ACL department. I have been in the position as the embroidery tutor for over 18 months and I am flying high and having the best time!

    My sister got a hand embroidery piece with green fly, straight and feather stitches and then ribbon and organza overlay, flowers secured on with buttons on top of the green foliage for her big birthday, but what about my nephew? I knew I did not want to do another hand embroidery piece as they are time consuming and yet at the same time so calming to do to take my mind off things. I had a deadline of going away to America and I knew for my nephew I wanted to do something different, so I looked on his website and Instagram and I was reminded of The Breathe Key. It is a guided series of mediation and deep breathing techniques to centre the body into a calm state, once I looked at the colours of turquoise, I knew that was it, I had my inspiration.

    I did not plan anything in the sketchbook as I worked directly onto the fabric. I did not have any turquoise fabric; all the satin had been used to make the fabric flowers that were selling at Greenwich Market before the pandemic. I did however have calico and water colour, so I did a water colour wash in turquoise and painted that over the fabric, this was coming out quite big to about A3 or just under it. What do I put on top of the watercolour? I went through my box of old pieces of calico of hand embroidery or painted fabric and I found it, a calico piece painted with bronze, blue and it is either silver or grey acrylic paint. I cut the piece up into stripes and played around with the placement of the shapes onto the fabric, pinned it down and then decided I wanted to do complete this piece with machine embroidery. I used the Bernia 1000, which I love, but the machine was not loving the rayon threads that my sister bought for me one birthday many moons ago, but the rayon is nice and has a nice shine so I preserved. I am glad I preserved as the piece evolved into a semi-circle and then I realised I needed something to fill in the bottom space. As I was in deep flow I also realised I needed something other than machine embroidery so I looked through my button box and found some beads and a button in a clear plastic bag that was intended to be made into a piece of jewellery, although the initial links had been put on they had not been linked up to make the said item. I took a few of the beaded wire over to the piece that had been machine embroidered and positioned them on; I was happy with the result and I felt satisfied; I took a picture and then proceeded to hand sew the beaded wire to the piece. I was so happy with the results! It was only until I had given the piece to my nephew that I remembered I had not taken any closeup pictures of the piece after it had been laced, thankfully my nephew sent me over 45 shots.

    Saul’s birthday was in August and as I am still in recovery from cfs/long covid it was not until March 2025 that I was well enough and during the school holiday’s that I had the extra capacity to travel to see him to hand the piece in person. I did not want to send the picture in the post.

  • Which Sewing Machine is best?

    I thought I would introduce you to Kit, although he is lovely and naughty, (well he is a kitten) I am not blogging about him. My friend has a condition called dyspraxia which affects the physical co-ordination and we were discussing sewing machines, she said that if she had bought a larger sewing machine, the bottom picture of a Jenome 4400 when we were first in lockdown she didn’t think she would be able to cope with the motor and pedal being so fast, for her the smaller sewing machine was ideal as it built up her confidence.

    It got me thinking about my friends condition, (when I was working as a learning disability support worker, I had a client who had the same condition, she was working within social services at the time and I was employed to help her with her admin work) and I thought my friend was absolutely correct in purchasing the smaller sewing machine. When I was working at John Lewis in Haberdashery, (I loved that job) we always advised our customers to buy the sewing machines that were selling in the £100 mark, (that’s over ten years ago, the machines would be about £150 now) especially if they wanted to sew cottons and progress to heavier weight cottons and denims and then they really needed to invest into a higher price sewing machine to support them on their sewing journey.

    For all my clients and new clients who I am looking forward to serve and who I have supported who have learning disabilities if you want to purchase a sewing machine, maybe go for one that is like a toy, in the top picture to build your confidence before investing into a higher price model, if you do buy a higher price model, go very slowly and contact me at info@samines.com so we can discuss how best I can support you.

    Let’s get back to Kit, he does love the sewing machine and he is not encouraged to walk on top of the sewing machine, but he is a boy kitten who seems to have a lot of energy and I asked my friend if she happened to see Kit on top of the machine, please could she send me a picture as I wanted to blog about the sewing machine.

  • Timing is out!

    This is my sewing machine that has just come back from Deptford Sewing Machines, the case I had to purchase on top of buying the sewing machine over twenty years ago at Chapman Sewing Machine company (my mum bought me the sewing machine), travelling from Southeast to North London is not a funny matter especially in these unusual times of Covid. A few weeks ago I made the trip to Deptford Sewing Company and walked up the high street just with the sewing machine in the case, golly it was hard going and as I have become unfit in Lockdown I had to stop every few yards to rest my arms. I went to the shop to find it was closed and I phoned the number to be told the shop was only opened for two days per week at the moment, that is not what was showing on the website, at that time it was showing that it was opened and closed on Thursdays and Sunday, and I realised that going forward I need to phone ahead to make sure the shop is open. The shop is no longer there and I got there in time to get my sewing machine fixed and collected on the last day of the shop closing for good, if you look on the website you will see they have moved to Gillingham. If you live in the South East ask them which shops do they collect and drop off from as an additional service they do, as there are a few sewing shops dotted about.

    I kicked the timing out on the sewing machine, I did my research and googled to be informed this is what had happened, (after watching a video on the bobbin case sitting within a Bernia sewing machine) on YouTube. On one of the videos the mechanic showed how he stripped down a sewing machine and worked on the timing and I thought okay it has to be repaired. The sewing needle was hitting on top of the bobbin and therefore not into the bobbin to connect with the thread to pull up through to the top and from phoning another mechanic in Southend, he confirmed what I had done and that it might as well go in for a service. I phoned the chap in Southend as I was looking for the chap who serviced my sewing machine the last time and he used to work at McCullough and Wallace, then where I was living all I had to do was get one bus from A to B, the chap has now retired and moved out of London, in hindsight I don’t think I would have gone to Southend, but when you have had good service from somebody one always wants to go back to the original person.

    When I took the sewing machine to Deptford I had the bright idea of hooking it up to the IKEA trolley, which they still sell and which was ideal for travelling on the bus and wheeling it down Deptford high street, plus this little trolley was my first go to trolley of taking my kit down to Greenwich Market for the Samines stall on Fridays.