doing free-motion quilting(自由縫) with mother's old sewing machine

------in remembrance of Mother

This is mother's old sewing machine.
-----no motor, no zigzag stitches( vvvvvv ) , bulky(體積大的 ) and cumbersome.
But it is mom's treasure.
 Seeing the machine , seeing  Mother.
I missed Mom.

Mother's passed away many many years .
She had been living in Taipei (Taiwan) since we moved there  in 1971.
But afterwards, sister and I moved to Kaohsiung and Pingtong since we married.
Mother likes sewing and embroidery.
In her age, it's natural for a  woman to do the sewing.

Everyone  was busy, no one can deal with the sewing machine ,
We sisters are far away in southern Taiwan.

Besides, it's bulky, and seems no function,
because we didn't see mom do the sewing in her last years.
Finally , Brother Wun  needed to clean his house,
he fixed and oiled  the machine and send it to Pingtong(Sister Yueh 's home ) by truck.
now, the machine lives in Pingtong safe and sound ,

With no reason, the machine ignited Sister Yueh's passion on sewing.
As I remember, Sister Yueh can use sewing machine
since she was in her elementary years.
Last month when everyone was busy enjoying the new year holidays,
 she was crazy about doing crazy quilts at home.

And it also interested me to know the function the machine can do.
Last week, I went to Pingtong to
try  if  the machine can do  free motion quilting.
 The outcome is as follow,

But I found the bobbin-winding system was abnormal,

The machine couldn't  wind thread on the bobbin to full,

It made me think of a way learned from my mother,----

using a chopstick to help wind the thread on the bobbin, 

if u don't know how , or u never know it, 

after u see the picture, u can try it.

How to make thread holders-- to store 48 spools of thread

Materials  for two thread holders (each can store 24 threads):
1. one plank of wood (46*8.5 cm), and cut it into 2 pieces
2. round long wood stick (90cm)  4 pieces (with diameter 9 mm)
3. nails, a few
4.  2  hooks

Instrument:
saw, hammer, screw driver, white glue, hand drill

Get started for embroidering

Before  embroidering, u should prepare
1. Fabric  that  is larger than the embroidery frame (aproximately 20cm*16cm)
2. Install the embroidery unit and the embroidery frame
3. replace the presser foot with the embroidery foot (foot Q)
then turn on the machine, emerging the menu of embroidery mode like the following screen

from  1 through 4, they are respectively embroidery patterns, character pattern , frame pattern , embroidery card .

practice using character pattern 

practice using frame pattern

finish

practice using embroidery pattern

Today is the birthday of my Brother SE400

and also the birthday of my blog.
I am sure Brother SE400 sewing machine 
would be my fourth child.
I'd give the machine warmth and vitality in Taiwan 
while living with it though it's not been really born in here.
The DHL（the delivery company as  photo below）
 took five days to bring it here from America this morning.
I am now as excited  as piglet. 
I can't wait to unpack it, 
but I still don't know how to use it 
though I've been using my-mother-style sewing machine
 for veinte( means 二十 ) years. 
Today is really worth celebrating .