Serging ahead with a Brother 1034D

Isn't it always nice when finances ease up a bit so that you can justify buying something that you *want*? Not *need* but *want*! I was greeted with some wonderful news this week which has given me that exact opportunity. Not an opportunity to go nuts but an opportunity to pick out something that I would like and get it for myself just because. And that is exactly what I ended up doing at 2:33am today... yes, you read that right, 2:33 AM! that is when I finally decided I had done enough review reading on my options I was weighing and knew what I was going to be comfortable buying.

Thanks to online shopping, in a few short (but will feel like long) days, I will be serging ahead in my sewing with a Brother 1034D serger. In addition, I will have some fabrics coming with it to try out sewing with knit fabrics and try making myself a blouse I have been wanting to try making.


Who knew it would be so hard to decide what to spend money on. I guess I have begun getting back into the mindset of what do I need not what do I want. So a few things that were contemplated included a new video card, an off camera flash, a new camera lens, a coverstitch machine or a serger.

The new video card was fairly quickly dismissed as my current one (well, actually, my old one as my newer one recently died & I ended up swapping back to my old one) seems to be doing what I need it to without too much trouble or frustration. It is slower than my other one but I am not playing video games anymore and with my photo editing and scrapbooking, sure speed would be nice but it is doing just fine as is. I just need to be a little more patient which is a good thing to force me to be.

An off camera flash remains on my wish list however, with spring upon us and never really taking a lot of indoor photos (other than cats who never stay put anyways), it didn't seem like something that I would use an awful lot currently. It is put on the back burner for more towards fall/winter again or next time that I can justify spending a bit more & I don't have things on that list that I prioritize ahead of it. 

Along the same lines was the decision about buying a new camera lens. Sure it would be nice but I really have enough lens to cover my needs. I will never be the super great photographer to justify having all sorts of lenses but what I do have, allows me to take pretty decent photos. I have my trusty 50mm f1.4 for indoor photos which usually suffices to capture the cats and other around the house shots I want. Then, I have my 18-250mm general use one which gives me a wide range of possibilities. I need to learn how to use my camera better (aka, put my knowledge into practical usage) before I could really justify getting a new one.

Then came the decision between a coverstitch machine and a serger... this one took quite a long time to make... well, long in terms of steady online review reading. I was narrowing down which coverstitch machine I would like if I were to get one but finding online pricing for it seemed to be a bit trickier. However, I did track down a price range... ~$800 with one exception but that exception came from an Amazon seller which had usually good reviews but the few bad reviews gave enough hesitation to not feel comfortable buying from them.

So in the end, I decided that I couldn't really justify the price of a coverstitch machine right now. I am not sure how much I would use it and don't even know how to use a serger yet which in many ways, it is very similar to. So serger was the decision. Thankfully for Stella who I know has been doing oodles of research before her purchases, the decison as to which one was already decided - the same one she has. It has seemed good from what I have seen/used it, I trust her research & decision and if I need help, she can walk me through using it. So an easy decision in that aspect.

Now where to buy from, that was another harder decision for me. I went back & forth between ordering from Walmart, Amazon or Fabric.com. The pricing across those were all pretty close. I decided in the end that I would go with Fabric.com as they are a local Atlanta business which means that it appears I should receive it a fair bit earlier than I would have if I had ordered from either of the other two places. I did pay a little higher price for it but that is the cost of my impatience now that I have decided what I want. As well, by ordering it from there, I lumped my fabric purchase with it so not only will the machine come but it will come with some fabric goodies.... my first time ordering fabric online which is a little nerve-wracking for me as I don't know my types of fabrics all that well yet but Stella has used them a bunch and had only good experiences with them. And well, I need to get over that fear because how wonderful is it to be able to pick out what you want at 2:33am & order it & it will be delivered direct to my door!

Now it is time to get some more scrapping done & finish up one more sewing project at least before it arrives!

If you are a scrapbooker, be sure to check out all the great $1 deals at Design House Digital's Dollar Days which is going on until the end of February at which time all those deals will revert back to their regular prices of $3.99. There are some really great items in there! I picked up Audrey Neal's Neutral Stock papers today and am dying to get to scrapping with them.

I will be back shortly to share some new pages...