Running Repairs

Both pairs of Board Shorts, that I made for my nephew earlier in the summer, needed running repairs.  One pair in fact had split all along the crotch seam from front to back!!  Apparently the day it happened my nephew happened to be wearing bright red boxer shorts and had to walk all the way home from the park with large flashes of red cotton appearing through the split seam with every step he took!

I'd promised I'd get the repairs done and would send the shorts back down to Bristol ASAP, so this morning I thought I'd get the sewing machine out.  The first repair was being sewn up when I took my foot off the foot-pedal and found, to my absolute horror, that the machine was carrying on sewing - and at full speed!!  What the heck??  I quickly disconnected the foot-pedal from the machine and tried to work out what was wrong with it.  I tried squeezing it, blowing bits of dust out of it but nothing worked and every time I plugged it back in the machine was sewing away like crazy without me even toucing the foot-pedal. 

I contemplated phoning the local sewing machine repair chap to get his advice, but then thought of how much he'd probably charge just to come and have a look and thought at least I'd have a go at sorting it out myself first.  A quick search revealed the sewing machine's instruction booklet but there was nothing of any use in there.  Next I got out the teeny-tiny little screwdriver that goes with the machine and began taking the foot-pedal apart.  I figured it couldn't be that complicated inside the plastic box and once I'd finally got the screws out and the cover off (there was a touch of the Krypton Factor about that manoevure)  I realised that the repair was pretty simple.  As I'd suspected one of the parts had got jammed.  I gave the workings a good old dust down with a tiny paintbrush (having failed to find the proper little brush that goes with the sewing machine,) removed lots of fluff and dust, put it all back together and, with huge relief, found I'd solved the problem.

So, finally, it was back to mending the shorts.  Both crotch seams were sewn up again - and in some parts triple-stitched in the hope that this time they'll stay sewn up.  I even managed to find a felt star in my 'felt bits' bag to cover up a hole that had appeared near the hem of one leg.   I think it works quite well.

Comments

[Maureen]

It's amazing what a ,free, clean up can do on a sewing machine:)