Clearly not my lucky day... or is it?

So, I have been diligently waiting for this weekend to find out if I won any of the Dresden ruler giveaways that I put my name in to. Naturally I didn't win... not that I expected to. I mean, the odds were slim, but I had hoped. But that's not really why I was unlucky. The reason for my unluckiness was because my sewing machine broke... or so I thought. Here's what happened.

Yesterday I was minding my own business sewing a makeshift carseat canopy. I was tired of heading out to the store and having strangers get just a bit too close to my new princess, and I was finding that if I just threw a blanket over the carseat handle the wind, or my other daughter, would send it flying off. So my quick fix solution was to take a heavy flannel Carters blanket that someone had given me for the birth of my first daughter (but that was still in its package!), and sew straps to it that would velcro around the handle to secure it in place. Everything was going great. I sewed my straps, attached them to the blanket, and sewed the stiff part of the velcro onto both straps, no problem. But when I went to attach the soft part of the velcro my sewing machine stopped working. Well, not exactly. The needle went up an down, but the fabric didn't push through. Check the feed dogs. Nope they were up... only, they weren't.

After finally managing to get the metal plate over the feed dogs up (it took a nickel to get under the throat and still have room to turn the screws), I realized it was a spring issue. After a time spent fiddling, and what to any one watching would have looked like a game of "Operation" complete with tweezers, a brush, and a screwdriver. I thought I fixed it, but the mechanism still wasn't working properly. I called the local Sew and Vac machine and was informed it would take two weeks and half of what I spent to buy the machine (granted the machine was pretty inexpensive since it was a first machine and I didn't know how much I would really be using it...) No way. I'd rather save the money and put it towards a new and better machine (sigh, next year... next year).

Cue my husband, who took the whole machine apart and figured out that the feed dogs had disengaged and all I needed to do was to turn the wheel to re-engage them. Oy. So now I just need to go and test it out by finishing my project. And then its off to work on my block of the week. Wish me luck!!

~~**UPDATE**~~

With only 2 seams left on my BOTW my machine broke again... this time the top thread keeps getting tangled below the feed dog plate. Clearly there is a bigger issue.