Grease and Thread

I am officially terrified of the next block in the skill builder sampler, a feathered star with 97 pieces. 97. I really shouldn’t have counted them. I have part of the fabric cut, and I need to get it in gear and just do it. I mean, really, what’s the worst that could happen?

While trying to work my way around to the feathered star, I’ve been procrastinating in grand fashion by overhauling the Singer 15-91 that I’m going to do the quilting on. I picked it up at auction a while back and verified that it runs, but I hadn’t done a cleanup on it yet.

I was suffering under the impression that it had been rewired in recent memory because it had a modern plug, but it turns out that only the wiring from the terminal block on had been replaced. The wiring to the motor wasn’t looking so healthy, though, and inside the motor the wiring was definitely shot, bits of insulation crumbling off here and there. Fair enough — it’s a 61-year-old machine. And I’d planned to tear down the motor anyway to clean the old grease out.

I had to enlist help with the soldering since I’ve never done that before and didn’t want to screw it up (I should learn to do that. Doesn’t that seem like the sort of thing a person ought to be able to do?) but it’s rewired now and ready for me to finish cleaning and put it back together. Here’s what it looks like at the moment:

Greasy! The thing that’s wrapped in plastic to protect it from cat hair is the armature (the bit that spins inside the motor). I’m also keeping the whole pile stowed in a huge ziploc for good measure — sometimes Vladimir cat likes to steal shiny things for his secret mad scientist lab. The round bits on the right are the handwheel and its associated doodads, below the armature is the worm gear from the motor, and on the left is the motor, partially reassembled.

In happier news, apart from needing new wiring the inside of the motor looks just fine, and it’s clearly been well-maintained over the years. Barring any further surprises, I should have it back together and running in pretty short order.

The actual sewing WIPs are coming along, too. The calavera embroidery is really starting to shape up now:

(That fabric is so hard to photograph — for some reason when I resize the photos it wants to moire like crazy.)

And I’m almost done with the piecing part of the hexagon pincushion. Just a couple more seams, and then I’m ready to take the paper templates out, trim it into a rectangle, and stitch it up:

Linking this up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.