CANNED AIR IN THE QUILTER'S TOOLBOX
Your trusty canned air is an indespensible tool for clearing around
and inside your sewing machine. Each time you begin a new day of sewing,
start a new project, change thread, or change the bobbin,
it's a good idea to first blow away any lint dust sticking around.
Depending on what kind of fabric I'm working with, I've learned to be even more aware of buildup that doesn't show until I open the machine (or until it catches in the tension and breaks the thread).
Cushy fabrics are the worst. Most cottons give off a certain amount of lint in the sewing process. Flannel is particularly prone (and I use a lot of flannel on children's quilts). Fleese was a challenge. And much as I love the Minky and "Soft Plush" types for babies and stuffed toys, the amount of lint tags they leave behind sometimes requires the vacuum as well as canned air.
When I'm in a hurry I find the canned air is a quick way to dust off the work surfaces around the sewing machine, too. My cutting mat gets a once-over nearly every day. So does my computer keyboard. As my dad pointed out, canned air is just about the best thing since sliced bread!
But I had a little problem using it on my sewing machine one day . . .
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With all that pink and purple flannel, and the double-pass to fancy stitch the seams down, the amount of lint that collected was noticable. For that project I was using the 100-Stitch Singer that I ordered online and had shipped directly to my "out in the country" address in rural Georgia near Lake Oconee.
This one doesn't open up without removing screws, but notice the narrow openings in the front cover. It was a great way to get the pressured air into nics and crannies and blow out thefuzzies that gathered. I started at the top and made a continuous blast of air all the way to the bottom, then made a full circle with the red "wand" in the drop-in bobbin housing. It worked great!
On the last day of working with flannel and fleece, the thread suddenly broke inside the machine and everything came to a full stop!
I pulled out every bit of thread that was visible, and cleaned the bobbin housing again even though I had just done it an hour earlier. But something was obviously still caught somewhere out of sight, because it wouldn't move when I rolled the wheel to test it.
This time I gave it a good shot of canned air along with my little cleaning brush, and was doing a really thorough job when suddenly the red wand flew off the can. I thought I heard it bounce off the wall, but it happened so fast I didn't even see it!
The grandkids checked the floor under the table, and I looked everywhere on the top, under and around the sewing machine, but there was no sign of the long slender red plastic tube.
Oh well ---- it was easy enough to just aim the spout of the can into the openings to finish what I started. And that did free up the machine to continue sewing. But then it made a "clack-clack-clack" noise that sounded like it was coming apart! Not good! There was nothing to do but find the screwdriver and remove the cover from the head.
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I rolled the wheel by hand and watched as everything moved in sync like a fine watch. There was no noise at that hand-driven speed, and I almost convinced myself that whatever it was had jarred back into place and everything was fine.
Not so! I pressed the pedal to run the machine at "sewing speed" and the clack-clack-clack persisted without pause while I closely inspected everything in motion. The noise was definitely coming from the lower electrical wire --- it wasn't moving in sync, it was banging against the take-up lever.
No way would I tackle moving or adjusting anything electrical. It was time to put the cover back on and drive to the nearest repair (minimum 50-miles each way). That was when my daughter observed, "isn't it funny how that wire casing is just exactly the same size and color as the wand off that air can . . ."
She was right. It WAS the wand!
It wasn't even close to the opening in the cover, so I couldn't pull it or shove it back out through the front. It was too long to pull it out through the opening where the cover was removed. (I tried -- it wouldn't "bend" to fit through the space.)
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What we did find was a round hole in the back of the machine that perfectly lined up with the position of the wand. When I go back in October I'll get a better photo of that (the one I have now is too blurry). I used my tweezers to inch the wand toward the back until it stuck out that hole enough to grab it from the outside. Then I put the cover back on and thanked my lucky stars for having found a solution! |
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From now on I'll use one hand to hand onto the wand whenever I used the canned air.
None of us is going to say it out loud. I'll put it in print, here, and you can draw your own conclusion. I tried forcing the wand through the opening in the front; it was too large to fit. I do remember hearing a sound that I thought was the wand bouncing off the wall behind the table. Can't put my arms around the logic that it could have actually bounced from the wall right into that little hole that is coincidentally just the same size as the wand, but I can't figure out any other explanation, either. S-P-O-O-K-Y!
