A Little Shakin' Goin' On...

The new table for my sewing machine sure does look good, but when I started sewing on it, it started vibrating badly. It was fine if I sewed s-l-o-w-l-y but I don't always do that.  So I hunted up something to better support the machine.

I found a piece of 3/4" plywood in the basement and stuck that under the sewing machine. That was much better, especially after I adjusted the feet on the extension table. But it was ugly, and one of the edges was very rough, as you can see in the photo above.

So I made a trip to one of the big-box hardware stores and bought a piece of 3/4" MDF (medium density fiberboard).  The advantage of MDF is that it's smooth and doesn't need to be sanded or painted (although I will paint it at some point in the future.)

This reduced the vibration nicely, but now I have another "problem." There's a lot of extra space over there that could be useful.

A nice new cutting mat will be very handy.

I also bought a few little bins for things that I will need when I sew. These will fit under the machine's extension table, within easy reach. There's a wire basket for scissors (I've since added a seam ripper), a divided container for pre-filled bobbins (I wanted one with a cover so they wouldnt go flying around if I accidentally knocked it on the floor), ans another little container for empty bobbins.

All of this is very good, because I saw a photo of one of Gwen Marston's string quilts in the new issue of AQ magazine.

and I was inspired.