The fun in function

Came a long way to get derailed. 

Machine pieced, front and back and edges with monkey tongues. I had a lot of them just hanging around from some long ago project. 

Sandwich making - getting the layers together evenly - took a very long evening. 

This morning I sat there looking at the Janome for ten minutes trying to remember the setup for free-motion. 

                        Tip~Life is short, ask for help~

 And there it was, under the front edge of the table, a hole that Jim drilled through the wood frame giving me access to the sliding mechanism that controls the feed dog. He sanded the edges of the hole so I wouldn't get splinters, bless him.

The "clunk" of the shift was so familiar. Did I have a free-motion foot? No. Hmm. Did it really matter? Tinker here, tinker there. Shit was not happening. 

Oh well, fall back to straight topstitching. Reset. And fail. Feed dogs would not re-engage. All indicators point to an overdue trip for service/repair.

Let's see how hand quilting feels. Two+ layers of commercial print cotton and a quarter inch of Warm&Natural cotton batting? The best I could manage was about five brutal stitches to the inch and I have tough hands. Hand quilting is out of the question.

Tomorrow, I'll saddle up the 99K and see if I can get this project off the deck. I have faith in Singer.