By: Giselle General

Our journey together started in January 2016. Only six months after settling in a larger home, I’ve learned the delights of having eight-seater dining table. Not only can we host board games with enough seats for friends, but I can make larger pieces of art.

Inspired by the idea from the brother-in-law in Victoria, I thought that having a couch quilt made with cut-up T-shirts is a great idea. Hence my frantic shopping for a sewing machine with only two weeks to spare before the husband’s birthday. The first thing I saw in the shelves of London Drugs is a box showing a machine with a pink décor, but with a brand name I’ve only known for printers. Well, what the heck, if they can make machines that work well with paper, maybe they can do a decent job with machines that work with thread and cloth.

After making a big mess of thread, strands of cloth, learning how to deal with materials new to me such as “batting” and “interfacing”, I finished the gift just in time. With the quilt now eight years old, it continues to be used daily on the couch as he plays video games. It’s already fraying and staining, that I had to patch it up and test just how many layers of blanket can a simple $90 machine handle.

Many projects came to life, decorated the house and draped over me and my husband’s bodies over the years – from pillow cases, dresses and pants, or multiple repairs of clothes until they fray so badly that they can only be used as rags.

The beginning months of the pandemic was next level as far as sewing projects. When I discovered the need to make fabric laundry bags for healthcare workers, we got to work really relentlessly. From March to September 2020, during spare time on lunch breaks, evenings and weekends, we made 300 of these fabric bags where healthcare workers can put their dirty uniforms after working with sick patients. That was such a process!

Somehow I didn’t realize that the inner rods and gears would wear down. It’s probably from the combination of dust from fabric and my admittedly aggressive pressing of the foot pedal. The first time I noticed that I can only do five stitches in a row and then needle bar grinds to a halt, I tried to fix things in a DIY way. Borrowing the husband’s screwdriver, I managed to unscrew and pry apart the two halves of the plastic cover and dab some oil in the parts that seem to act like gears.

Somehow it wasn’t until 2021 when I realized I should’ve treated you like a car, with tune-up and dusting routines on a regular basis. The first time I took you to the local quilting supplies store I first visited in 2015, the clerk on the machine repair booth gave a scolding look as I admitted I tried to do some solo repairs. The tuneup was successful through and I managed to do more projects.

In the fall of 2022, the husband had a wacky idea of using T-shirts in a different creative way to turn them into skirts or kilts for people in his running group. One kilt that combined 5 shirts turned into another, and now there are about 14 people going for runs and showing off multiple logos of this running group’s merchandise. The kilts became so popular that as per the tradition of this running group, I earned my code name related to my “shenanigans.” I am officially named “Licensed to Kilt”.

Those who requested and received the kilts paid various amounts of cash as a thank you. Back in 2022 I received another sewing machine from the father-in-law, but it was too rickety that one day, parts of the tension wheel flew off the machine. And then, you also had the same issue of breaking into a halt after only five stitches. With the cash from the kilts, both machines went for repair again.

But as I was only halfway through making a new kilt, despite being repaired just recently, you gave out again. I suppose it is time for the new arrival but older version machine to take the reigns.

As you journey into the city’s Eco Station facility this summer (whenever the husband and I actually get motivated to do so), that your go to a better place. Maybe your parts gets dismantled with the salvageable bits of metal be repurposed to something else, or the bits of plastic somehow chemically transformed into fuel.

As we say in our home, thank you and goodbye!