Blueberry Buckle

Tuesday Tutorial: Clean Your Machine!

If you sew on a regular basis, or even occasionally, you can appreciate the value of having your machine running smoothly. Proper maintenance is crucial to your machine's health, and routine cleaning with a periodic oiling will keep your machine happy and humming along.

Every machine is different, therefore you must refer to your owner's manual for specific instructions. f for some reason you don't have a manual, you can usually google search for a copy of one. For illustration purposes I'm going to show you how I cleaned my machine. Please don't take anything on your machine apart unless you know what you're doing! (That, dear ones, is my disclaimer. You dismantle your sewing machine at your own risk.)

How often do you need to clean and oil your machine? I think you should clean it fairly often to prevent lint from building up. Oiling should be done less frequently. On my Bernina, a little oil can indicator comes on my screen every 180,000 stitches, so I would say that if you do a lot of sewing, every month or two should be sufficient.

How to Clean and Oil a Bernina Aurora 440QE

First, gather together your owner's manual, lubricant (I used what came with my machine), a small brush, and a microfiber cleaning cloth.

Make sure your machine is turned off and unplug the power cable. Remove the presser foor and needle.

Remove the stitch plate by pressing down at the back right corner. The front will pop up a bit so you can remove it.

Eeeewwww!

Use a small, soft brush to remove the lint from the stitch plate area. Some of it will fall down into the bobbin area; we'll get that in a minute. Use your microfiber cloth to gently wipe off the inside of the stitch plate, and pop it back into place.

Give your entire machine a good wiping with the cloth. The Bernina owner's manual says to use a damp cloth, but I found that my dry cloth worked just fine.

Now open the bobbin cover. Remove the bobbin case and set it aside. Let down the locking lever and the black hook race cover by pressing on the release lever that is to the left.

Remove the hook. Clean it off with the dry cloth. At this point, I also dusted a wee bit of lint from the black hook race cover. Replace the hook and close the hook race cover. Be sure the locking pin engages with a soft click. (You'll feel it more than you will hear it.) Turn the handwheel to ensure everything is in place.

 
Now you can oil your machine. Squeeze one drop of oil into the black hook race. That's all!

The manual says to run your machine a bit without thread to prevent oil from soiling your fabric; I prefer to thread my machine and stitch for a few minutes on scrap fabric. If there's any oil residue, it will be worked out pretty quickly.

All finished!

Don't forget to enter this week's giveaway of a Kona Cotton Color Card (maybe two if enough people comment). I think I made this one a little too complicated. You don't have to do much. Just comment on the giveaway post and you're entered! Earn extra entries if you wish, but they are optional.

Happy and smooth sewing!

Sue

Tuesday Tutorial: How to Make Personalized Sew-in Labels

You can make you very own easy-peasy labels to sew into the seams of your projects. They are great for garments, bags, and even quilts. You can use them to identify yourself as seamstress, "Madame Stitch Diva", "Susan Smith", or "Handmade by Grandma". You can use them to identify your business, "Bags by Billy" or "quilts.etsy.com". You can even personalize your children's handmade garments with their own names, "Muffy", "Bob", or "Wagner Family" (in the case you end up with lots of hand-me-downs, and I can certainly relate to that!)

First, you need the following supplies:

Avery Iron on Transfer Labels.

Be sure to get the correct type for your printer and fabric.

Fabric for your labels. I used Kona Cotton Solid in White.

Your computer and printer, of course, and software that allows you to mirror image text, like Publisher or InDesign.

Sewing machine and thread.

Rotary cutting tools. You may also use a ruler and scissors, but this way is much easier.

Iron.

Let's Begin

First, set up your labels in your desktop publishing software. I use InDesign, but you can use any software that allows you to mirror image text. I typed blueberrybuckle.etsy.com in a font that I like, then made it dark blue. I then mirror-imaged the text box (in Publisher you can do this of you use WordArt) and copied it 29 times. I laid mine out in three columns, leaving about an inch between each line. The important thing here is to leave an inch (or more) above each line of text so you'll have enough fabric to actually make a label.

Note: You need not make all your labels the same. You can make several, or many, different labels on the same page. The important thing to remember is that you can only run the sheet through the printer once, so it's most frugal to use as much of the sheet as possible.

Print your sheet of labels as the Avery instructions describe. Mine look like this:

You can see that there is plenty of space (an inch) between the bottom of one and the top of the next.

Prepare to Iron
 
While your iron is heating up, trim your labels close to the edge of printing like this, leaving the columns intact:

Cut a strip of your fabric that is at least two inches wider and longer than your strip of transfers. Following the instructions in the Avery package, iron your labels onto the right side of the fabric.

Again, following the Avery instructions, wait until the fabric is cool, and peel off the paper. Now your text will read correctly:

Now it's time to trim the left and right edges of the column of labels. Using your rotary ruler, measure out 5/8" from the end of your text and trim the fabric:

 

Repeat on the other side of the column.

Sewing

Finger-press one long edge a scant 1/4" to the wrong side, then fold over again to form a 1/4" hem. Machine stitch the hem:

(I flipped it up so you can see the finger-pressed hem.)

When you are finished with one long edge, finger-press and stitch the other edge:

Almost done!

Cut Apart the Labels

Again, using your rotary cutter and ruler, cut apart the labels, leaving 3/8" above the text and 5/8" below the text:

And there you have them, labels for your sewing projects!

Aren't they great when they're sewn in? 

Have fun making labels!

Sue