Thursday 29 January 2015

New sewing machine

As I mentioned before, I got a new sewing machine for Christmas. It's the Janome 525S and I LOVE it. My old, 15 year old Brother machine rattled and snarled and snorted every time I used it. It had straight stitch and zig zag stitch and that was all. I really did not enjoy using it and as a result hardly ever did.


The Janome is much heavier than my old machine. Solidly built, it does not feel at all cheap. It's totally stable while I work with it on my sewing table. It's a medium range machine so I've made the step up from what was a basic machine - and boy, does it make a difference.

The straight stitches are smooth, tight and without a blip. The zig zags can go from wide to nice and tight. Stitch length and width can be varied simply. I can now do free motion embroidery which is something I have wanted to do for ages.  I also have a few decorative stitches so I can jazz up my projects if I feel like it. It's obviously not a top of the range machine in that it doesn't give me loads of fancy stitches . But then sewing is one of the many crafts I'm involved in so I was looking for a machine that did a little of everything in a simple and straightforward way.I do believe I found it with the Janome.

This was my first project - a note pad cover made from felt with a bondaweb design touched up with hand embroidery, free motion embroidery, silk and beads.


I recently signed up for a Craftsy Class called Stupendous Stitching: Adventures in Surface Design and managed to work through the videos with the help of the sewing machine too. It was a really nice process. My first sample is shown below made using batik fabric, rat tail cord, machine stitching and hand embroidery. It was my first attempt but I definitely want to do more of it. 




So all-in-all the Janome meets my expectations. Here's hoping I will get plenty more time to play with it over the coming months.

2 comments:

Seth said...

Love that stitching Gillian!

Gillian McMurray said...

Thanks Seth. I was certainly great fun :)