Stella Part Two - Together Again

Stella is now all in one piece again and established in her new home!  Doesn't she look beautiful?

With HS coming home for Thanksgiving, I finally decided it was time to remove Stella from her boxes and get her established in her new surroundings (yes, it took me awhile - nothing like procrastination, is there?)

The finish on Stella's cabinet shows a little wear over the 85 years of her life, and I've been toying with the idea of sprucing her up a bit, but I finally decided I like her just the way she is.  You can see here that she was well packaged.  We used a ton of this foam insulation, and wrapped it in plastic wrap, then shaped her box to fit the enclosure we made.

The iron pieces are the most fragile, I'm told, so Dear Sister came up with the idea of doing a cut-out in the foam to protect these fragile parts.  We stacked them together, layered foam on top and bottom, and wrapped the whole stack in plastic wrap and then built a box to fit.  Thank goodness for box cutters and packing tape.

The treadle and the flywheel were packaged in a similar manner in their own separate box.

You have to watch out for the pointy parts.

I asked Bob, the nice man at my local sewing machine store, to put her together for me.  He took her metal parts to his shop, cleaned them up, greased the parts that needed to be greased, oiled the parts that needed to be oiled (apparently they are different - who knew?) and brought them back to me, then proceeded to put her together.  Once he had the legs on the cabinet, he put Stella in, then attached the belt.  I'm glad I asked him to do this.  His price was quite reasonable, and the greasing, oiling, and belt would have taken me hours.  I watched him do the belt - it was a little tricky and required a drill.  I didn't know you could drill through leather.

So here she is.  Now all I have to do is get my rhythm back.  I haven't used her for at least 40 years - and I'm not sure anyone has.  My sister commented in an email yesterday that she made all her doll clothes on this baby.  I remember embellishing dish towels and making a dress one summer.  And lots of mending.

And Stella will be a lovely reminder of my grandmother and all the summers I spent with her.

Thanks, Gram.