Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

When the holiday season starts, and the evenings are too dark to work outside,  I love sewing, knitting or weaving projects for presents.  Since I just got the ultimate new sewing machine for my birthday (a Pfaff Expression 3.2), sewing projects got priority and I started with making a little purse for my oldest granddaughter, who will turn 3 soon.

I found the pattern online, at a great website called “Make It & Love It” and used fabric remnants I had on hand.  This turned out to be so much fun, that I figured even the younger, infant granddaughters could use purses for later, as could 3 “grand-nieces” and daughters of friends.  What started out as one purse project, ended with eight little purses – all lined with shimmering satin fabric and little button closures.

So we purchased a commercial fur sewing machine – I should explain this process: Jeff has been checking out fur sewing machines (a most useful tool) for a while and found a used one on Craigs list in Boston, where Anja and Duff made arrangements to pick it up, but they had to wait until Zach needed to travel to New England for work (from Ohio) with his pick-up truck, so they could physically get this machine, which is attached to a heavy duty table, and then Zach drove home via Carlisle and dropped the machine off.

Jeff threading the machine

This is not at all like an ordinary sewing machine and it does amazing seams with fur – the seam looks similar to one made by a serger machine, but much, much finer.  Up to now, we had been using Tina’s rather nice, regular sewing machine, but the fur was pretty hard on it.  Despite this, Anja and Jeff made several raccoon hats before  – see older blog post – and last year we made a fur stole for Grammy, which turned out ok as well.  Looks like this winter we’ll get to sew in a much more efficient way!