A few weeks ago, I attended a free seminar at my local sewing shop about sewing machine basics. It turned out to not be hugely helpful (I already knew most of what they talked about), but it did light a fire under me to finally clean my sewing machine. I've had Stella for more than a year now, and I've never done more than a cursory dust sweeping from the exterior. Eeek! (Although at least now she has a cozy, so helpfully that'll help in the future.) In fact, part of the reason I kept putting it off was that I was afraid of how bad it might be (which, of course, meant that it was only going to get worse, thereby justifying my fears). Well, it wasn't as bad as I feared:
See those dust/lint bunnies? Yuck. But at least they weren't just everywhere, like I expected.
I'm now freelancing from home, which means I can take advantage of lunch breaks by spending a little time in the sewing room. So I decided to take some time today to finally bust open the machine. It was only a little scary (isn't there something really intimidating about unscrewing and pulling apart your sewing machine — what if I can't get it back together? AHHH!!!).
Anyway ... following my manual instructions, I successfully dismantled the basic parts. Then, I took out my handy dust brush (which came with the machine) and some Q-tips, wiping it until it was clean as a whistle, helped by the smallest attachment on my vacuum.
Ooo, la, la!
Whew! I (and Stella) feel so much better now that I've actually conquered my fear. Hopefully, it won't take me another year to do it again.
I'm sure Stella appreciated the attention :) I didn't clean mine for 2.5 years (insert one big GASP!). Found out the hard way on a Friday night at 8pm with a deadline the next day. Let's just say 2 Wal-marts and 50 miles later, I had oil in hand ready to clean and grease!
ReplyDeleteOh, my! Well, I guess that should be incentive for me to keep it up. :)
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