Mommy can still fix everything

[jethrien]

I'm working on a Ren Faire costume for Chuckro. (Still a little nervous - I don't actually have a pattern, and I'm going off a costume maker's site online. I've already made one major mistake and managed to fix it. We'll see how this comes out.) My sewing machine spontaneously stopped working last night. After rereading the manual, and fiddling, and looking up stuff online, I finally gave up and called my mom. Who, of course, knew how to fix it.

Mommy can still make everything better.

Comments

[wendywoowho.livejournal.com]

What was wrong, and what magic mojo did Mommy suggest to fix it?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

She reminded me that this machine had pulled this trick before, and last time it turned out that the upper thread had managed to slip off the doohickey whose name I can't remember that goes up and down. It doesn't look like it's slipped off, but if you rethread completely, it starts working again. I'd remembered that I'd had a problem before, and couldn't remember what to do to fix it. A visual inspection of the upper thread looks like it's fine, and the way the fabric behaves, it looks like the problem is with the bobbin. So I took the bobbin out over and over, trying to figure out what was wrong with the shuttle, and never looked at the thingy-that-goes-up-and-down.

After talking to her, I rethreaded the upper thread, and suddenly everything was happy again.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

My mom's "Make everything better" skills often revolved around providing food at the right time or yelling at the person who'd made everything wrong (or their supervisor, or their corporate office...). I really need to do the yelling and letter-writing myself these days, but the food's still good.

[jeths-mom.livejournal.com]

We all have our ways of being supportive - it's nice to still be needed, whatever that requires.

[lyriendel.livejournal.com]

Ha! In my family, when my mom's sewing machine breaks (or really, just about anything else), I get to come home and fix it. :P

I had major sewing machine trouble myself a few months ago, the thread kept getting caught in the shuttle, which was mysteriously getting scratched up by the needle every time this happened. Finally figured out the needle was too blunt and needed to be changed. Somehow I thought those things would last longer than that. But I guess that's why they give you so many refills.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

A lot of the frustration here was that I haven't used this machine all that heavily. Most of the suggestions were along the lines of "blunted needle" and "scratched sewing surface", but I could look at it and see that everything was still sharp and shiny.