Lint

 When D.D. #2 left home for university, way back in '89, I gave her this nifty little ProctorSilex travel iron.  The handle is removable and snaps onto the sole plate for a very compact unit.  The sole plate measures just 6 1/2" x 2 3/4" so it's not too handy for ironing something like a blouse, but it is ideal for pressing piecework when I'm quilting.  She came back home after one year and stayed on with us, eventually taking her university courses in Regina, where we were living at that time.  She gave the iron back to me, and it has since become a favourite quilting tool, along with the June Taylor Cut 'n Press reversible cutting/pressing board.  When I'm piecing I need only turn to the left and press the seams as I finish them.

Lately the iron was temperamental.  Sometimes it would heat and sometimes it wouldn't.  This week I had an idea: I removed the little compartment, shown at the bottom of the iron, where the cord enters.  I thought perhaps a connection was loose in there.  What I found was a whole lot of lint, wedged around the connections.  I removed it with a tweezers, and then gave it a shot of compressed air.  So far it seems that this treatment has totally rejuvenated my favourite little iron!  Hoorah!

Then yesterday as I was sewing on a few quilt projects I had to replace the bobbin, which had run out of thread.  I've been noticing that the bobbin
race had a lot of lint around it, and thought, Now's the time to clean that out!  After a half hour of tweezing, brushing and poking around with a pipe cleaner I had dug out all these hunks of lint.  And, actually, after I took the picture I found some more in there to dig out.  Then I applied one drop of machine oil to the wick in the centre of the bobbin race.  What a difference it made to the machine!  How quietly and smoothly it runs now!

I had known for some time that this needed to be done.  Next time, I promised myself, I won't wait so long!

I did try turning this machine, a Janome Horizon, upside down (all unplugged, of course) to see if I could removed the casing on the bottom of the machine, but that was no go.  My previous machine, a Janome 6400, could be opened up and the dust, lint and threads that had accumulated in the bottom could be swept out.  But I'll have to take this Janome in to have it serviced every few years.