Thanks To The Hand Holders Of The World!

Smack in the middle of making the Project QUILTING quilt, I was lucky enough to have a yearly mom's retreat happen.  Woohoo!  If you don't have a bunch of friends who like to get together for a weekend to eat, drink and be treat each other well, I highly recommend you find one.  

It meant that I would need to bring a sewing machine with me if I was going to finish the quilt in time. The only portable machine I have right now is my Grandmother's Featherweight which, as you may remember, is haunted and therefore was in need of repair.  

I don't know about you, but I fear electricity.  It can mess you up. So I needed a fair amount of hand holding for this project.  On the other hand, no way was I going to pay to have someone fix it.  I mean, it was obviously a simple fix, you just had to know what to do.  

First I googled around and found this very inspiring blog: Mysewingmachineobsession.blogspot.com.  I emailed the woman whose blog it is and asked pointless questions that basically added up to "Tell me I can do this please!"  She got back to me very promptly and told me I could do it. I stopped at the local hardware store and bought an plug thingy and was ready-ish to rumble.

I also cornered a friend at the retreat who fixes up vintage machines and she was a huge help.  Go buy things from her etsy shop here.  :)

Hand-holding powers engaged, I started.  The hardest part was prying the inside of the plug out of the cover.

It fought me all the way.

Then I stuck the wires through.

We cut off the insulation with scissors (By the way, don't try this at home.  Surely there's a safer, better way but we were at a retreat center and had slim pickin's for tools.  We twisted each of those two little sets of wires clockwise.  This is so that when we screwed them in, they stayed bundled together.   Then, we just wrapped them around the screws and screwed them in snugly.  I wish I'd taken a picture at that point.  Sorry, I was too into it, I guess.

It went back on way easier than it came off.  I picked this huge plug because it's easy to grab and I won't be tempted to pull it out of the outlet by just the wire again.

Check it!  Light is on.  Motor is running and the quilt got finished. All I needed was hand holding and people telling me I could handle it.  

Thanks to the hand holders of the world!