Antiquing We Will Go!

When Mona came to sew on Tuesday, we made a plan for Thursday to meet up at our favorite Mexican place for lunch, and then to wander into
North Wilkesboro for some antique mall browsing and putzing around before my drive home.

I haven’t been to this place in quite a while, and we were happily poking about when all of a sudden Mona exclaimed “Pink machine!  On the floor!  Pink Sewing Machine!”

I swear, the girl was close to having a heart attack!

Did I train her well or what?!

Turns out the machine is a late 1950s, early 1960s Atlas!

We moved it out from under the pile of stuff where it was partially hidden and here I am checking it out making sure that the handwheel turns, the bobbin case and foot pedal are there, and that the wiring doesn’t look completely scary.

Oooh, isn’t she a pretty straight stitcher?

It looks like Elvis’s pink 1955 Cadillac!

 The Atlas was marked $50.00, a complete steal and after I took it up to the front counter to be held while we shopped some more, the sales gal came and told us “Good news!  That booth is having a 30% off sale on everything in the booth.”  Whooopie!  This machine came home for $35.00.

There was a lot of ancient dried up tape on the machine bed, rock hard residue and yuck.  I oiled up the machine well, and let all of that good oil soak in while I let the GUNK on the needle plate and machine bed soak in a puddle of Goo Gone for nearly 24 hours.  It came off!  I love that stuff.  Be sure if you are using anything on a machine that it won’t harm the finish or the decals or the chrome.  This did the trick for me.  The key is being patient while it works to dissolve the yuck that had become petrified after so many years.

A good cleaning, oiling, new belt, new bobbin tire, and a needle change and slight tension adjustment had her humming like this on her test run:

A video posted by Bonnie K Hunter (@quiltville_bonnie) on Dec 16, 2016 at 11:52am PST

Elvis’s first pink Caddie burned due to a fire that started in the brake line. Upon purchasing his next Cadillac, he had the car repainted by a neighbor who named the color 'Elvis Rose'. Elvis gifted this beautiful car to his mother, Gladys. Gladys Presley would always proudly point to it as 'her' car.

I think she wants to be called Gladys, don’t you?

I pulled out my languishing Garlic Knots blocks – all the pieces were so scrambled I had to sort them all out again and then try to refresh my memory as to what I was doing.  Turns out I ran into a standstill because I needed more background neutral sets. How long has it been since I worked on this?

My 2” neutrals are NON-EXISTENT after all of the 4 patches for our En Provence Mystery.  There is just nothing left that is not too close to “brown paper bag.”  All of the light neutrals have found their way into either En Provence, or other projects.  So what’s a girl to do?

I got side tracked into pressing MORE.

These will be heading to the Accuquilt likely on Sunday.

I went through some untamed scraps.  I went through fat-quarter bins and pulled the “What was I thinking?!”  “This will never go!” “You’ve been here too long!” fat quarters and I am cutting them into Scrap User’s System widths.  It’s time to start 2017 with a NEW BATCH of neutral wonderfulness.  Makes me excited just to think about it!

When was the last time you culled through your fat quarters in an effort to enrich your strip stash?  I want mine to be happy.  I want it to be enticing.  I want fabrics that have sat too long to find their way into new projects.  I want to breathe new life into a dying bin of old used up neutrals.

And not much else sewing happened because I ironed my evening away!

This battle axe of a machine was also at the antique mall.

That whole thread tension section scares me.  LOL!

I’m guessing this is late 1950s as well, and it was much more money than the pink Atlas. 

One machine was more than enough.

And there were some quilts too – but I’ll get to that later because we are heading out early this morning to meet with a realtor in yet another Saturday search for the perfect cabin with acreage and NO HOA.  Wish us luck!

Take a good look at these pinwheels.

What do you see?

Beauty in imperfection!

Happy Accidents.

REAL.

Have a great Saturday, everyone!

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