NC TOGA day 4: field trips

Thursday at TOGA are always devoted to field trips.

Morning begins at Mary Jo's Cloth Store in Gastonia NC, about an hour's drive from the TOGA base in Monroe.  Folklore has it that this is the best fabric store between D.C. and Atlanta.  I like to stock up on basic cotton batting.  And I bought some sewing and map theme fabrics.

Barbara dug through the 65 cent pattern bins and found some patterns for me too.

Linda is here from literally halfway around the world and doing some hard core international shopping.

Is this photo blurry?  No, it is ten year old Naomi caught in motion.  And she is often in motion!  She found cute fabrics for doll blankets.  She does her own sewing, btw, and has done for YEARS.  A seriously impressive kid.


Next stop:  lunch at Kyle Fletcher's BBQ, recommended by Susan.  Awesome BBQ.  Pork BBQ.  I will stop here again.  Who knew that this was going to turn into a food blog?  At least I didn't take a photo of my sliced bbq sandwich with slaw.

On to Long Creek Mills, also in Gastonia.  Thread, thread, thread and more thread.  And stabilizer. And other things.

anyone who has seen my studio knows that I have a serious thread fetish.

TOGAteers attempting to make a serious dent in Long Creek Mills thread stock.  Barbara and I did our part.

just one of many aisles at Long Creek Mills

The group went on to Harry Berzak's private antique sewing machine museum.  I was sorry to miss it this year.  Harry claims to be only one of three serious collectors in the U.S.   If you want to see it, check out my post from 2014.  Lots and lots of pictures there, well worth a click.

Singer 328, convert it if you dare!

Now for an update on how to treadle a Singer 328.  Leila wrote to me to say that she has done this and provided me a link to her blog post on how to convert the 328 to treadle.  She warned me in her email that "it is not an easy conversion."  That's pretty much all I need to know, because I also agree with her assessment that the 328 "looks like an ugly alien grasshopper."  For me it's the yucky color and I have wondered what one would look like painted a cool color.  But thanks to Leila now I won't bother.  If I want to treadle a cam machine I have a lovely Singer 306.

Naomi added her own display to the motel room window.  Her Singer 20 is named "Betsy" and it sews very well.









and her proud mama.  Look closely and you will see not only Linda's shadow selfie but another shadow selfie of me, taking a picture of Linda taking a picture of Naomi's display.