smoking machine

a few days ago I scooped up this sweet PFAFF 1475 CD sewing machine secondhand off facebook marketplace and was SO stoked. I of course immediately wanted to dive into some projects. a few days prior to that, I bought a very cool linocut fish-stamped patch from @slowstitchseattle so rushed to add that to my denim pants. and then I tried cropping an old uniqlo shirt I had with some fun purple thread.

it was during this second project where I maybe was risking it for the biscuit. after about an hour or so of humming away at this t-shirt hem, on his way down the stairs my housemate called down to me and said "yo, do you know what that smell is?" I looked up from my project and was like "erm, no. maybe my machine?" thinking that it was maybe some very normal smells coming from my 30 yr old machine that hadn't been used in over a decade. as suggested by my housemate, I got up, briefly went outside, and then returned to our dining area only to have burnt metal and plastic smells rush up into my nose. it was almost dangerously worse than I had expected. in attempt to diagnose the problem, I did a few more stitches only to find wisps of literal smoke swimming up from my machine. that was enough for me to call it a day. I then turned off my PFAFF, took it to the porch to air out, and opened up nearly every window in our house that now smelled toxic.

I took it into to a sewing machine repair shop only to find that the price of a premium service was 150% the amount that I paid for the machine! so naturally, i did not agree to the service and took it home to inspect on my own :p

stay tuned for more updates. but tl;dr, watch out for killer sewing machines. they work slow and stealthy. and thank you to my housemate for potentially saving my life <3