Quieting Down BROTHER 1034D

A couple weeks ago, I got brave and tackled a serger from a local church quilting group and got it serging.  This evening, after I had my evening nap, I got brave and googled how to stop a Brother serger from squealing. One of my Brother 1034D sergers serged just fine, but it made such an awful sound! Have I ever told you I LOVE Google?? It helps me with ALL of my problems! I found this video.

 

I thought it was very helpful, and I checked out my belt to see if it was loose, but that was not the problem. It still squealed.I removed the bottom cover and oiled, I removed the cover off the end by the needle, and I finally removed the whole left end cover. I found lots of things to oil. There are lots of rotating parts, and I oiled them all. I finally quieted it down.

I think I can safely say I have passed the stage of being ‘afraid’ of sergers. From the ones I have threaded, and checked over, they are all very similar.

New and Old Smart Phones

A month or so ago, Louie and I got new Smart Phones. We had enough reward points to upgrade early, so we each got a new Samsung Galaxy S4. I bought a couple phone covers that I switch often. I use a purple one like this one on weekdays, and the ‘quilty’ one below, I use mostly on the weekends. I don’t want to scratch the design off it, and it is not as ‘rubbery’ as the purple one, so I wouldn’t want it to ‘slide’ off anything and hit the floor.

The other day at work, I was only able to listen to our local radio station, (I work in a big metal building, which means poor reception). That radio station is OK most days, except for when they are airing a Cardinals game. I’m not a fan of any sport, so please understand….I’m not bashing any team. I just don’t want to listen to a live broadcast of a ball game. I got to thinking…which can be a dangerous thing, sometimes!!!  I started thinking about my old Blackberry phone that was just sitting around…..lonely. My blackberry was a nice phone, and I had a hard time thinking that it was just going to be thrown out sometime in the future, like all my previous smart phones. I started wondering if I could use it to play music, if I used a wi-fi signal. A lot of people at work use their smart phones with an auxiliary cord, and plug them into a radio that has an auxiliary jack. My radio at work does not have the jack. I have two other radios here that I could take to work, but they don’t have an auxiliary jacks either! Well, I thought before I got too excited, I should check to see if my old Blackberry would work this way. I came home, and dug out the BB and put it on the charger. As soon as it was charged, I enabled the wi-fi again, and downloaded the Slacker Radio app for Blackberry. I had music!!!!

Last night, I was shopping online to find a radio to buy to take to work that had an auxiliary jack. I found one, and will probably be buying it this weekend at the store. I also need to buy a cable, BUT this morning, I enabled the bluetooth and paired my BB phone with my Bose wireless speaker. I am enjoying listening to Air1 radio. I don’t want to take my wireless speaker to work, as the speaker if pretty large. Also, the parts I work with are oily, and I wear rubber gloves. A much less expensive radio will work just fine.

UPDATE: I didn’t buy the boom box. I bought a Bose Mini wireless speaker. (My enabler talked me into it!) NOT AT ALL what I was going to buy, but I can use either my old (or new) phone with tunein, or my ipod with bluetooth. Since it is much smaller, it should work good. I bought a protective cover for it, and a case to put it in. I also bought a small case to put both my phone and ipod in (not shown). These will NOT be left out at work when I go home for the day, but rather transported back and forth to work, or HIDDEN from second shift.

I know most or all of you already knew you could do this, but I am just so thrilled about this! I knew I could do this with my Nook HD+, but didn’t want to take that to work either. I have a Nook Color that I take to work to read my books on breaks, but I don’t think that would work as well either. I am just so happy my old phone won’t be sitting in a drawer anymore, and it is not hooked up to cellular service, so it’s free with just a wi-fi signal, which I can get at work. I just had to disable the settings on the phone for cellular service so the phone would not be searching for a cellular signal constantly and draining the battery. I can use it to surf the internet too! It’s basically like a mini computer!

Who knew? Not me!

Have a great weekend!!!

Using Cone Thread on a Sewing Machine

I was searching for more thrifty ways (little or no cost) to use a cone of thread on a regular sewing machine, because I want to convert a local quilting group over to using cones of thread, instead of spools.  I found a new and awesome way, only using an empty bobbin! I found this blog post at Sophia’s Sundries. The photos are from Sophia’s blog post.

I tried threading one of my machines this way, and it worked! This should also work putting the bobbin on a vertical spool pin if your bobbin winder is on the front of the machine, as it is on some of the vintage sewing machines that I sew on sometimes. Please note, especially if you don’t read Sophia’s blog link, that the thread goes through the little hole in the bobbin before it goes on to the normal threading of the machine. That keeps the thread from wandering off to other destinations.

Thanks Sophia! I’ll be using this trick myself!

Give it a try!

‘Dixie’, the Singer 301A (LBOW)

Light Beige Oyster White is what they call the color of this machine. I call it two tone, mostly because I can’t remember what LBOW stands for. I’m old, and I never did have a memory. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

The other day I was surfing Craigslist (such a dangerous thing to do!) and I found this nice Singer 301A. She was born in 1956. (I love this model of machine, just as I love Singer 404, 401A, 403, 500A, and 503A. They all have the aluminum bodies and gear driven internal motors.) I didn’t do anything for a day or two, but last night before I went to bed, I emailed, and today, we picked her up in Dixon, Illinois. It was a nice day for a ride (just a ‘little’ windy…Auntie Em! Auntie Em!).  We brought her home, I gave her a bath, oiled her, changed the needle, wound a bobbin, put a 1/4” presser foot on and Louie changed the foot control to an electronic one.

She’s ready to go!

Front…

Back…

I bought another ‘very modern Brother’ machine at Goodwill in Sterling, but I haven’t checked it out yet, and if it works out, it’s going to be donated.

Have a great week! Where did the weekend go?

New Home MyLock 334 Serger Fix

Friday morning about 9:00, my phone rang. On the other end, was ‘Jan’ from a local church quilting group. I had not met her before, but I would very soon. I had already met ‘Peggy’ a few weeks ago when she asked me to take a look at a machine that she picked up at Goodwill. I had a nice visit with Peggy when she picked up her machine and one I donated to the group, and since that visit, ‘Joann’ had called me to ask me about looking at a serger that was donated to their group. This morning Jan said she had the serger, and asked me if I could take a look at it. I told her I really did NOT know much about sergers, but I had passed the ‘scared’ stage of threading them awhile back, so I told her I would at least check to see if it was threaded properly.

Jan came over about half an hour later with serger in hand. She was going to leave it, but I invited her to stay and let me see if I could get it going. The right needle thread cone was completely gone. There was only one needle in the serger, and I found that it was in backward, and not all the way up inside the holder. I added another needle (thank the Lord the serger uses regular sewing machine needles). I checked the threading and it looked ok, so I tried to form a thread chain with it. It would rotate a few turns, and although it was making a thread chain, something inside would ‘hit’ on something else and not want to move. That was a mystery for awhile. I thought the right looper was hitting the bottom of the plate, so I messed with that for awhile, but that just didn’t make sense. It started moving again better, (after ‘tweaking’ the left looper with my pliars---that’s what someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, does) but I noticed that the left looper kept breaking thread. By this time, it was about 11:30 and I needed to just ‘give up’ for awhile. I also needed to quit to get ready to go have a mammogram, so I told her if she would leave it, I would try again later, but if I failed, she would have to try to find someone more qualified than me. I showed her a few sewing machines that I could offer to the group, she chose two, and after a brief visit in the driveway, she left.

This afternoon after my mammogram, I came home and had lunch, then got ready to go to an Easter Cantata, so the serger sat, still not working.

Tonight, we got home about 10:30, and about 11:00 after Louie went to bed, I thought I would take another ‘stab’ at seeing if I could get it working. At this point, the left looper thread was breaking, and it wouldn’t even form a thread chain anymore. I thought I would just completely start from scratch and see if I could get it to make a thread chain. I pulled all the thread out, then decided to give it a bath before I tried to rethread. It looked like it had sat in a garage, as it had what looked to me like gravel dust on it. I cleaned out all the grooves, and I also ran the edge of my dish cloth through the tension disks. I started over fresh, and completely threaded it again. I did notice a thread guide on the left looper that I missed the first time, but still it would not form a thread chain. I scratched my head, and started turning the hand wheel and trying to see why. I noticed that the left looper was grazing the needles and pushing them back a little bit as it passed, so I ‘tweaked’ the left looper back just a little bit, and it started to make a chain! YaHoo! Mountain Dew! (How many people remember that?!!!)

Everything fell into place after that. I still don’t know why earlier it sounded and acted like something was hitting, and it didn’t want to turn, but it all started working! Maybe it all just needed to move as I think this machine has sat for a very long time. (Arthritis?)

I set both needle tension disks on 4 and both looper tension disks on 5, and serged several test strips on my c-fold towels. I think it’s ready to go report for duty!

Persistence and patience paid off, and I feel so blessed to have been able to get this working so the quilting ladies can do their work. I don’t know if I learned anything from this, but I did win this one!

It’s all good!