My Sewing Center

Earlier this year, I bought a sewing table that I found online. It was one of those assemble yourself deals. There were a lot of parts, but since I have a lot of experience with assemble yourself furniture, I put it together in a few hours. This table is perfect to hold both my sewing machine and serger at the same time. The sides are able to fold down and store away, but I have it permanently set up in a spare bedroom that gives lots of natural light.

My sewing machine is a Janome Sewist 509. I bought it about 3 years ago when I finally got fed up with my Montgomery Wards brand sewing machine since I had since 1984. My old machine never worked well and started skipping stitches early on. Even after getting it serviced, it would work fine for a little while, but the problem came back. Since getting my Janome, sewing has become a fun experience again. It is a very basic machine with just 7 stitches. Now, I wish I had bought a higher end model with more stitches! But for under $200, it works great and is reliable, which is the most important thing.

A year later, I bought a serger. I had never used a serger before but always wanted one because of the professional looking seams you can get with the serger. My serger is a Janome MyLock 644D. It came with a how-to video. Having to learn how to thread 4 needles instead of just 1 was intimidating at first. It took me a while to figure out how to adjust the tension and cutting width of the blade to get my stitches just right. But now, I feel much more comfortable with it and enjoy using it.