It may take a bit of looking but that photo is my foot, garbed in a sock, on the pedal of my sewing machine. I very rarely sew with shoes on -- or at last not on my right foot which I use on the pedal of the machine, when the weather is reasonably warm, I'm like likely to be barefooted.Recently Karen who write the Selvage Blog, which is in the sidebar here, said in a post that she usually sews barefooted and asked her readers what they did. The last time I looked over 30 had said they sew bare or sock-footed, and none were advocates for shoes. I feel I have much more control especially about the speed when I can feel the pedal right there under the sole of my foot. Naturally I know that when I drive a car, I am also controlling the speed with my foot, but that seems a very different matter. I do not drive barefooted and it's my understanding that most insurance companies insist the driver have on shoes -- which I think is pretty ridiculous.
To digress from sewing matters, I have long been aware that the reason we have the seat belt laws is because of serious lobbying on the part of insurance companies, not because legislators cared about saving our lives. The insurance companies didn't like the thousands and thousands of dollars it cost when an accident victim went through the windshield -- the injuries were horrible, if not fatal and the consequences often lifelong disabilities.
Well, I haven't heard of any disabilities from controlling sewing machines with the unshod foot and plan to continue sewing this was for the foreseeable future.
2 comments :
Your post made me laugh because I automatically kick off my right shoe when I begin sewing. It's so automatic, in fact, that when I went shopping for a new sewing machine years ago, I did it without thinking while I was trying out display machines. The saleswoman laughed and said most of her customers did the same thing!
Yep, count me among the shoeless sewers, too.
;-)
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