Mistress of the Curvemaster

Well, I'm pleasantly surprised. About a year ago, during a trip to Pacific International Quilt Festival, I was struck by one of those weird, frenzied buying bursts and I came home with a Curve Master Presser Foot. I was seduced by the demonstration, which made the thing look so dang easy! The idea is that with this foot, you can sew curved seams without pinning and everything magically lines up. I'm willing to believe in magic, and instant-gratification girl that I am, I was eager to try it if it avoided pinning.

Well, I got it home only to discovery that I couldn't use the foot on my Bernina without a special shank. I put it in my drawer and forgot about it.

Some months later, I was at a quilt show and I walked past a Bernina booth. Lightbulb: "I need a shank!" I explained what I needed to the saleslady and why, and she sold me the part. The next day, I gleefully attached the Curvemaster to the new shank, eager to begin sewing curves at will. But wait. I could not get the shank to attach to my machine. I tried and tried. (It was, after all, a Bernina part sold to me by a Bernina person.) I put it back in the drawer and forgot about it.

Then, I took the Einstein Double Wedding Ring Variation class, and it dawned on me that it'd be the perfect use for the Curvemaster. I made a trip to my local Bernina dealer, owned by a veritable sewing machine wizard and nicest-of-the-nice guys, Jim. I showed him the shank I'd been sold by the other Bernina folks, and he showed me that it didn't fit my machine because they had sold me the wrong part. AARRGH. I came away with the right shank, happily.

Then, of course, I got stuck in the land of "put everything up on the design wall before you sew anything" black hole which, as I'm discovering, just doesn't work that well for me. So, yesterday, inspired by having reached a design wall place I could tolerate and by Melody's comments to my whining about the design wall process, I started to sew.

And darned if the Curvemaster didn't do what it promises! It took a bit of trial and error, to be sure. And using it was complicated a bit by the fact that these pieces don't start in a matching position, so figuring out where to start sewing and have them end up right took some fiddling. I finally reached the easy solution of marking the center points, starting to sew at the center point out, then flipping the block around to sew from the center in the other direction and everything lined up perfectly!

So, a lovely time was had by all on Saturday afternoon...while I sat at my machine mastering the Curvemaster, Caroline was at my computer playing games and keeping up her constant stream of chatter, and Roger napped.

And for my diligence, I was rewarded by an evening out! Caroline had a sleep-over date with her friend Sarah, so Roger and I took the opportunity to meet our friends Matt and Laura for a drink at the new, trendy "Barn Diva" (last time I was there, I saw George Lucas). We had Blood Orange Margaritas. Delicious. Then, on to dinner at Sake 'O, our new and excellent japanese restaurant. A lovely evening. And all grown-ups!