Cleaning your sewing machine..aghhh

It's a cold and dull morning here in Eastport. Thankfully there were 3 people lined up to go out in boat so I didn't have to go so that the quota could be caught. I did promise that I would go tomorrow though. I'm hoping it will be warmer!

This morning my first job was to clean my sewing machine. I hate doing it even though it is really simple and quick. so that I remember to do it when I should, I wind 3 bobbins at a time, and when those are empty I make myself clean the machine. On a good quilting day I might have to do it several times...aghhh...

You can see the lint in the photo, especially the tints of red around the space where the bobbin case goes. There's not a lot of it because I keep on top of it, and that is the way my machine likes it. She gets really contrary when she is dirty!

I don't use any fancy equipment. Just a make up brush and a set of gun cleaner brushes.

Karl put me on to the gun cleaner brushes and I bought them at Harbour Freight for around $2. I think you can buy them at Princess Auto, Canadian Tire and Walmart too.

The first t hing I do is sweep the inside with the make up brush. It's amazing how the lint stickes to the bristles.

Then I use one of the gun cleaner brushes and gently go in the crevices, pulling up lint as I go.

The first time I did this I could see a piece of lint that I wanted to retrieve, and I was afraid that the brush would push the lint down further. But, no worries. As soon as I touched the lint with the brush , it stuck to the brush and I was able to pull it out.

Clean machine in 2-3 minutes. The longest part is actually winding the new bobbins. I won't buy a bobbin winder because then I might stray away from my rule of 3 bobbins and then I clean!

Last night I finished pulling the papers off the last of my 120 red string squares for the Hunter Star String Quilt, so now I have all the pieces ready for sewing together.

There are 120 neutral string squares, 120 red string squares, and 240 'star' blocks, 120 going in each direction. There were 480 half string triangles! A year ago I would have looked at that pattern and said, "You'd have to be out of your mind!" But now I have a half square triangle method, and they are easy peasy. I'm going to write a blog post about it someday soon.

But for today, until I have to help deal with packaging the cod fish, I'm going to be working on the NQC Pinwheels and Windmills Challenge. The next block was emailed to me on Friday, so I came to the computer to print the instructions.

There it is so far. This week I add a border and make 4 new blocks for the next row. I'm also going to make some flower appliques that were included in the pattern as optional add-ons. The owls were optional too, but I love them!

Have a great day!