IKEA Sewing Machine Review

When my youngest daughter turned six (she's 9 now) we bought her a Mini Janome sewing machine. For the 100 euros it cost I expected a simple but good machine from a well known brand like Janome. Sadly the Mini Janome has never worked properly, made a terrible noise when it did work and using it was frustrating for both Luna and myself. Because it's no fun trying to teach or learn how to sew when the machine jams all the time! We ended up practising on my own sewing machine (a Husqvarna Sapphire 835) and I wish I hadn't traded in my simple but perfectly fine Huskystar E20 when I bought my own machine a couple of years ago. Because it would have been perfect for my daughter.

Ye Olde Huskystar E20. I even made a stuffed turtle with it. 

Fast forward to 2014. I was at IKEA with a shopping cart full of stuff I didn't know I needed when I left home that morning, when I stumbled upon 'Sy' (it means Sewing in Swedish) the IKEA sewing machine. It was a little under 80 euros*, looked pretty sturdy to me, with all the basic stitches etc you would expect on a simple machine so I decided to take a chance and take it home with me.
* I later checked and in the US and the UK the Sy is much cheaper, about $80 (50 euros) and 45 GBP (55 euros), wish I could have bought it for those prices!

And while I bought the Sy for my daughter I really want to stress that this isn't a kid's sewing machine. It's a proper-grown up machine, so you will find no extra kid-friendly or safety things on this machine. Luna is very careful when she sews and has been watching and learning for a few years now which is why I trust her with a 'big' sewing machine.

Obviously I wanted to try it out immediately (before handing it over to my daughter) and after an initial misunderstanding on my part about the front loading bobbin case it was ready to go. Here's my (and Luna's) experience with the machine so far.

The machine is quite heavy, about six kilos, which is good as it doesn't 'walk away' from you while you sew as smaller and lighter machines sometimes do. It has all the basic stitches and then some. Like most people we just use the straight stitch and zig zag stitch. You can't adjust the stitch length on this machine but there's three straight stitches on the dial with three different lengths. I find the smallest one (A) rather tiny and the third one (C) is nearly regular in length but we use the middle one (B) the most :)

There are also various zig zag options so we're good with the most basic stitches.

There is a back stitch option and (yay!) a thread cutter on the side. It also has a light which is good. The bobbin loads in the front, something I'm not used to, so it's always a surprise when the thread runs out. On the little metal plate there's a seam guide too.

The Sy comes with a pedal (which is quite small and very plastic-y) and several extras like a seam ripper and some bobbins. I forgot to take a photo of the accessories when we just had the Sy (and by now some have gone MIA in the sewing room) but you can see them here on the IKEA website.

The one thing that I noticed right away is that the machine sews very fast, even if you can control the speed a little bit with the pedal it still goes quite fast. If you try to go slow it tends to jam. This is clearly something Luna still has to adjust to. It's also important to guide the fabric until the last bit of your sewing or it will trail off and leave you with a crooked seam. My Husqvarna which was about 800 euros more expensive does that too by the way...

For most of your straight line sewing (paired with a little sewing experience) the speed isn't a problem but sometimes you need to sew slowly, when you sew curves for example, and that would become tricky on this machine.

Winding thread on the bobbin was an interesting experience. The manual was very clear and easy to follow but it involved pulling out the hand wheel on the side which was a new to me action. The end result was a quite loosely wound up bobbin. However that didn't give us any problems when we started sewing with it. I only just found out IKEA has some excellent Sy instruction videos on YouTube including one for the winding up bobbins.



Currently Luna is making Log Cabin blocks for her very first quilt on the Sy and it's going very well. The actual quilting will probably be done on my Husqvarna though as I don't expect the Sy is quite up to that task.

If you are a beginner and you have a little more cash to spend then you might consider buying something like The Huskystar E20  I mentioned earlier. It was about twice the price (perhaps a little more) of the Sy and in my view definitely in another league. A good second hand sewing machine is always option too of course... However if you only sew every now and then and if your projects are quite straightforward (pillows, simple curtains and bags etc) the no non-sense Sy is good value for your money in my opinion.

Hope this review was useful!

Slowly but surely...

Sometimes I feel like my little juggling Polar Bear: trying to keep everything up in the air (household chores, kids, work and everything else) and only just managing. Or actually not managing as the house is often quite untidy, I am always behind with my ironing (and not just a little bit either) and I have a heap of unfinished projects so high it matches my overflowing laundry baskets. I also haven't been out for a run in six weeks. I try to ignore all the 'must-do's' though and squeeze in some crafty time every day. So sometimes things may take a long time to get done, like the Granny Square Quilt Top pictured above, but eventually they get done!

I had finished these blocks two years ago (there was a small Granny Square Quilt hype going on then) but never finished the Quilt Top. As it turned out it was not *that* much work to finish it and I'm so glad I did because I used some of my very favourite fabrics in the quilt. The next step is to quilt it of course.... I also made some blocks for the Double Dutch Random Sampler Quilt Along but will show those in another post.

Whenever I get a chance during the day I stitch on this Yellow Beetle Embroidery. It is a bit 'work' (as it has to do with the Furry Nice Class) but mostly pleasure! Shading in Embroidery is just so much fun. As you can see this one is nearly finished save for a few legs and a flower. :)

Something I haven't had time for yet is to try out every feature on this IKEA sewing machine I bought for Luna last week. I will definitely post a review here on the blog soon and tell you all about it though!

Fancy Floss Storage

IKEA calls my new floss storage place HELMER: Drawer Unit on casters but I prefer to call it my Floss Cabinet. It's perfect if you have a rather large floss stash that you mainly keep in skeins (not on bobbins). I keep scissors and needles and such in the top drawer and one drawer is reserved for current projects. The other four drawers are filled with floss (still in the zip locks in which I stored them previously). 

Many thanks to all the sweet crafty folk who offered to make my little Pindsvin something (read the details here). As you can see in the photo below my Pindsvin stuffy is not finished yet, but I'm making good progress. The quills are quite a lot of work and I had to order some more felt to finish his spiky 'do'. :) 

So...for the peeps that are going to knit/sew/craft something for this little fella: I will put together a fact sheet with Pindsvin's measurements etc in the next couple of weeks so he won't end up with a tiny scarf and a huge bag or something ;) I'd really like to have your e-mail addresses so if I can't get in touch with you via your comment: please send me an email with your name and project. Thanks! 

On the 18th of October the new  &Stitches e-zine is out. In the next week me and Carina are busy putting the final touches to this fabulous fourth issue which is all about Scandinavia! A theme that is dear to my heart as I have lived in Norway for a couple of years and have fond memories of my time there. Anyways...do check out the &Stitches blog  this week (and we'd appreciate a follow there too!) because this week it's Scandinavian Week. We have a giveaway, a free pattern and sneak peeks of the (fab!) new issue. Hope to see you all there!  

Zoe's bag (made from my stash)

It's a good thing I don't visit Ikea as much as I used to because every time I'm there I just have to buy some of their fabrics. Some of the IKEA fabrics are quite heavy (canvas probably) and durable. Perfect for making bags and tote bags and so on, and that's what I did! Zoe needed a new bag for her Theater Class and this bag  holds everything she needs: ballet shoes, clothes for dancing, a drink and a snack and a binder.

The bag is simply shaped like a long tote bag with a 'boxy bottom' and the top folds over so it looks like a messenger bag. It was super easy to make apart from the bits where there were multiple layers of canvas to sew through. I used a 'jeans' needle for that. It was a bit noisy but my Husqvarna managed to do it in the end!

Look! I haz cute Ikea fabric lining too!

I followed this tutorial but simplified it quite a bit. I have a less fancier strap and did not bother with an inside pocket or a closure.

So while I was actually using some of my stash to make this bag. Some new additions to my stash arrived!

The very lovely Katy and I did a scrap swap. That is to say: I sent her some sorry scraps, she sent me enough to make quilts for the whole neighbourhood!

My embroidery 'un paperbag'

About a year ago I made the bag you can see here on the left cleverly displayed on Luna's scooter. It's based on a Purl Bee tutorial and it's called the Unpaper bag. I love the Unpaper bag especially it's 'boxy bottom' . The bag on the photo is a rather cheap version made with Ikea fabric as outer fabric (I still have A LOT of that fabric by the way, it was on sale when it went out of their fabric collection) and twill tape handles. Usually store bought bag handles -plastic, bamboo and most of all leather- are rather expensive and this works fine for me. Baghandles would make the bag look more classy I suppose. My Unpaper bag is now my embroidery bag but I'm sure it is a great bag to hold other crafty stuff too. I made two other Unpaper bags after this one, both to hold several smaller gifts. My bag looks a bit floppy, that's because it is a bit floppy. Instead of interfacing I used an extra layer of cotton fabric which I thought would do the job. A thicker outer fabric would probably help too.

Many thanks to everyone who has responded to the giveaway and the freebie pattern. Just to be clear: the giveaway is really only 1 fat quarter and several smaller pieces of fabric. And the gorgeous ricrac of course. I thought maybe some of you were under the impression that there were several fat quarters...