Manuals

Last week I bought a sewing machine at a garage sale for $5.  You might remember me posting this picture of the beauty:

Beauty is definitely in the eyes of the beholder because I think she's gorgeous!  Mostly because everytime I look at her, my creative nerves get tingly with the fact that I can now start doing sewing projects.  Like finally hem the curtains in the living room.  And once I've figured that out - maybe do some reupholstery, make some halloween costumes, sew a duvet cover....

But first I had to figure out if I had bought a dud or not.  So I plugged it in and.... nothing.  Hmmmm.

Luckly, it turned out that the pedal cord was just a little loose.  So I fixed that.  Yay!  It worked!

Now that I knew it wasn't a dud, I decided to practice a little on a piece of sample fabric.  Let me remind you here that I have absolutely no sewing machine experience whatsoever.  Foolishly I thought that if I just tinkered about I would figure it out as I went along.  So, when I couldn't figure out how to thread the stupid needle, it was a bit of a letdown.

My sewing machine did not come with a manual.  However, if you stumble upon a (working) older electronic at a thrift store or garage sale, there's no reason to turn your nose up at it if it doesn't have a manual with it.  I learned this years ago when my aunt gave me an old Sears SLR camera that I had no idea how to use.  My dad found a copy of the user's manual online and printed it out for me.  Lovely!

So I jotted down the model number of my Singer sewing machine and did a quick Swagbucks search.  I came up with a couple of options.  I think you can contact Singer directly and buy a copy, but I like free stuff.  There are lots of different repositories online of downloadable manuals.  I find mine at Manuals Online.  It was a free PDF file that you can save to your computer and print out.  Handy dandy!