Almost Dead Sewing Machine

My sewing machine was stabbed...by itself...with it's own needle.  I thought that it was going to depart me for sewing machine heaven; or at the very least that I was going to have to pay someone an arm and a leg to fix it.  I must admit that I did panic.  That is until I realised that there was a little screw just waiting there for me to unscrew and try and fix my beeeeg boo boo.

This all happened while I was finishing Chloe's hooded bath towel.  Her second towel.  I started 2 for her about 8 months ago.  The first one was finished straight away, but this one needed a pretty fabric trim...and so was never finished.  Not that a fabric trim is hard work; it just needed brain power and a few minutes of uninterrupted peace and quiet for me to think.

Back to my almost dead sewing machine. 

I unscrewed that little screw....and other than the horror of a whole heap of fluff!  I found that the needle had bedded itself into my bobbin holder.

I have had my sewing machine for 3 years.  I am ashamed to say that I have never de-fluffed her.

Fortunately the bobbin holder slipped right out.

Yikes!  Right through the plastic!  I am sure as heck happy that was not my finger!  Luckily the needled wriggled easily enough out of there.

Thank goodness it wasn't actually as bad as it first seemed.

I plucked out the wads of fluff and used one of the girls paint brushes to clean out the rest of the fluff.

The brush that came with my machine was a tad bit pathetic.  The fluff just slipped straight off of it, which meant that any fluff in the places that a little brush could get and my fingers could not would have been stuck there for eternity. 

Ta dah!  All beautiful and sparkly and clean!

The purple trimmed towel is Ava's towel.  I made hers about 2 years ago.  The yellow trimmed towel is Chloe's newly trimmed towel.  They each have a second towel simply trimmed with pretty ribbon.

In case you are interested, I used this tutorial for these hooded towels.

Just in case you are worried about incapacitating your sewing machine by making these towels - my first 3 made up without a hitch.  I think that I was just impatient to get the last 1 finished.