Interfacing and Needles

This is not one of my more exciting posts (LOL) but sometimes it is necessary for us to look at the boring and mundane things to help us improve our skills and get better results with sewing.

I sent my sewing machine in to be serviced last week as it was skipping stitches. The technician returned the machine to me with a packet of needles telling me to use quality needles. :-0
I was a bit insulted to be honest. The sales guy said not use butterfly needles and I told him over the phone that I never buy Butterfly and all my needles are either Janome, Schmetz or Organ. later that night I took out my needle box to investigate.


Sure enough in one of the Organ packets were butterfly and unmarked needles, I had been scammed.
BUT WAIT it gets worse. Since then I have been looking more closely at all my Organ packets and you know what I think MANY of them are knock offs! The technician sent me a packet of Organ in a different coloured packet that cost about 1.200 or 1.500 from a shop in Ruwi. All the needles have the Organ name stamped exactly in line with the shaft.
The packet on the left is the one the technician gave me. If you click on the picture you will see how they are stamped (I copied the stamp, direction etc)
Most of my green packets the Organ stamp is skewif, all over the place and some have just 90, others have 90/14. Also I noticed the pack he gave me the foil was bright white inside. When I got the magnifying glass on some of the green packets I could also see tiny rust marks. Any Oman ladies reading, check your needles, I think I found out why they are so cheap here!

Interfacing. Gesh this is another hit and miss here. I decided to do some testing on the interfacings available here to see what holds up the best and which one is more suitable for projects like clothing or bags as we can not buy brand names that are often suggested in patterns like Amy Butler. I was thrilled to find a medium weight woven at the Ghubra Al hadramy but he has it out in the store room not in the shop so you have to be very specific or bring along a sample. This week I got 10 meters so the other Chatty Crafters didn't have to go to Ghubra to get some. All samples except one (Vliesline) have been purchased locally for anywhere from 500bz to 1.000 Rial per meter. Interesting results and now I feel a bit more confident in which one to use for what purpose.

My samples are washed, dried and ironed and ready to share with the Chatty Crafters at our meet up this week.

On a lighter and totally unrelated note here are my lot playing "Where is the Bear" with Daddy.

I love my husband for getting on the floor and playing with the kids, I feel very lucky ;-)

Thanks for stopping by ...