This little dress cost £2.50 from a charity shop, bought specially so I could cut it up.
It was in good enough condition to be used as a play dress because it wasn't actually falling apart. It had nice flat felled seams at the front of the shoulders,
and a bound neckline with a bit of staining - probably pasta sauce, a great favourite with toddlers.
About three weeks ago I got busy with the scissors and cut it up to make a pattern.
Here is the video showing the whole process.
And here is the finished dress made with the home-made pattern...
... complete with pretty trim around the sleeves...
... and neckline (note no pasta sauce yet)...
... and finally, the most exciting part of all, the first buttonholes I have made with the buttonholer. This has been a really enjoyable project from start to finish. I used the 1949 Singer 15K hand machine for all the machine stitching, except for the buttonholes, where I used the Singer 201K treadle. Now I can't wait to make the next little dress. Linking up with Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday andLeanne's blogDevoted Quilterfor TGIFF and Barbara's blog Cat Patchesfor the March NewFO - meanwhilethe February NewFO free motion landscape is proceeding at a far more leisurely pace...
Tonight I shall be watching the third instalment of The Great British Sewing Bee. Amongst other things, the contestants will be tackling the horrors of stretchy fabrics and making a pair of leggings. Not my cup of tea at all. More to my taste is making a button loop, which was one of the tasks set in the first programme a fortnight ago. This endearingly tatty little item is the sample button and loop I sewed in about 1969 or 70 for needlework at school. It has been lurking in the button tin ever since.
On close inspection, the loop looks rather like a miniature bag handle.
To make sure I could still do it - I can't remember making another one in between times - I made another last week and have posted a video on Youtube. This time, instead of using about six strands of ordinary machine cotton, I decided to use stranded embroidery thread. I wanted to see the finished effect when using a variegated thread. It would look nice with a pretty cotton print so the colours would match. It doesn't look too bad with the ghastly shade of brown of the sample in the video. I have to use up that dreadful brown somehow. The dye runs, so samples are all it is fit for.
At the moment there are doll quilts winging their way across the Atlantic between England and Utah. Pattilou and I posted the quilts within a day of each other. And because I can't visit Pattilou in real life, I have visited her blog, and seen that she has had a bumper crop of peaches. Coming from a country where you would need a walled garden, an expert gardener and an extraordinarily good year to grow your own peaches (a long winded way of saying it is virtually impossible), I have to confess to a slight wave of envy. When we were in Poland this summer the peach trees in my husband's cousin's garden were laden with fruit, whereas last year they rotted on the tree. So this summer was the first time I had ever eaten home grown peaches, and very tasty they were too. Pattilou has made lots of peach jam... which got me thinking... so I took a trip to the greengrocer's and came home with peaches from Italy and nectarines from Spain, which combined with English apples and lemons from I can't remember where...
... gave me the ingredients to start experimenting. Hooray it worked! Here is the video if you want to have a go. Welcome to Loree Ellis, the latest follower - thank you for joining!
One of the true great joys of late summer and autumn - blackberries! It is worth all the scratches from the brambles to get at the fruit. Last week I went out hacking back the nettles and checking the hedges around a couple of fields near home, getting well and truly scratched and stung so I could have enough for a nice big bowl of perfect blackberries. When we were in Poland in August the blackberries were just finishing, and their brambles are a different variety to ours - not so widespread and rampant, and not half so tough and prickly. Our brambles are complete thugs compared to theirs, and the fruit starts to ripen about a month after theirs have finished. The fruit here will keep on going for a few weeks. I could stock the freezer if it weren't already full.
And because the freezer was full, I had to make jam straight away. So here's the video if you want to give it a try. Linking up today with Liz's blog Brambleberry Cottage (how appropriate) for Time Travel Thursday so you can see lots of other projects, including recipes..
This was the sewing I was busy with last Friday, a Crusader's tabard for my friend Kate's son. I went to their house in South Wales with the intention of making two tabards, another one for an older brother too, but in the end only finished this one. Too much talking and not enough sewing, but I can make the second one at home. I used Kate's 1916 Singer 28K hand machine to knock this little item together, and by tea time we had one very happy young lad. He is ready to do serious battle with the home made wooden sword and shield. This isn't the complete outfit - he didn't have time to get on his chain mail. Talking of kitchens...
...if anyone is interested in trying out apple and sloe jam, the video is up on Youtube. Very tasty.
This is where I have been spending hours over the last week or so, with my head stuck in the blackcurrant bushes. It is a bumper crop this year, and one of the bushes has currants so big that the branches are weighed down to the ground. I am already running out of freezer space, so it was fortunate that I had enough jars in the house to make the first batch of jam. Every batch of fruit has to be washed and have the stalks removed, then put in the freezer on the same day, otherwise it won't keep. Making jam in hot weather is pretty daunting, but I've done it. I couldn't face the prospect of doing it all in one day, so I stewed the fruit on Monday, left it in the pan overnight, and added the sugar and finished the job off on Tuesday.
And here's the video. I only kicked the tripod once.
Suddenly (I hardly dare say this in case I jinx it) the weather is glorious. Months and months of cloud have given way to a few days of clear skies, which means it is the ideal weather for making videos. I spent a large chunk of yesterday dragging machines into the kitchen to make a visual guide on setting and threading the needle the right way. It's all about making sure that the needle makes the loop in the right place, which depends on the stitch-making mechanism. With long bobbin machines the shuttle has to pass though the loop: with round bobbin machines the loop is picked up by a hook and taken around the bobbin.
I also have to take advantage of this weather by catching up on over a year's neglect of the allotment, waging war on dandelions, nettles, brambles, bindweed and couch grass. If you spot grubby fingernails on videos, you will know why.
After putting up the illustrations showing how to do rouleau straps, I decided I needed to try out the method. It is wonderfully easy. Sewing alongside the cord keeps the stitching straight and the width of the strap even.
You only need to do three or four stitches through the cord at the end to keep it secure. The trickiest part is turning the end inside out to start pulling it through. I was using cotton poplin, but it would have been easier with a finer material, for instance a cotton lawn.
The latest Youtube video went up last night. It wasn't a particularly easy one to make - making my first ever rouleau straps kneeling on the floor, with the sewing machine on a low table and the camera on a low tripod in front of me so I had to reach round from either side of it and do my best not to knock the tripod. I suffer for my art. The reservation I have with these straps is that they might not take too much strain. This is why I showed two ways of pulling the strap the right way round. If the cord is left uncut you can leave it inside so you can have a reinforced strap. You would just have to make sure that if you are using cotton, both the fabric and the cord are pre-washed so they don't shrink at different rates once they are first washed after the work is finished. Welcome to Susan Owenby, the latest follower. Thank you for joining!
Update 29th April - I've tried this method out. It is easy, and I've made a video which you can find on today's post.
I hardly ever watch television, except for the Great British Bake-Off, and now I'm following the Great British Sewing Bee - whether the link will let people abroad watch the programmes, I don't know, but in any event BBC iPlayer only keeps the episodes of a series online for about a week after the last instalment, which is next Tuesday. Last night I settled down to watch the four remaining contestants tackle a set task - a child's dress with a shirred bodice and rouleau straps. I'm not convinced rouleau straps are particularly practical on a child's dress. Because they are cut on the bias they stretch, and a single line of straight stitch will get pulled. Sooner or later the thread will snap. I am totally in agreement with Sandra who disobeyed the rules and made the dress with flat straps. What I find slightly frustrating about the programme is that it shies away from showing the techniques involved. They didn't show how the contestants did their rouleau straps, there was just passing mention of pulling the tube inside out with a hook. This makes viewers think they will need special equipment if they want to try it at home. They don't. I've never actually made rouleau straps, but if I ever need to, I will follow these instructions, which show how to make a rouleau and use it for button loops. Ingenious and simple.
Here is the source of the diagrams, a beautiful little book dating from 1928.
It's the beautiful 1927 Singer 99K hand machine. It has already featured several times in past posts - click on the right hand side of the page on the heading "Singer 99K" and you will recognise this machine. Also it appears on several of my Youtube videos. It is the clean machine of the two shown on the video about removing slide plates, and it is used on the video showing mitred corners on quilt binding.
Last night I discovered a blog linky party hosted by Stacey Napier at her blog The Tilted Quilt If you visit her blog you will find lots of links to other blogs where people are showing their machines - old, new, all sorts - and the stories behind them. So here is the story of this machine. It came to me out of the blue. A friend came up to me at church one Sunday and told me he had a machine for me in the boot. He'd just done a house clearance. The conversation went something like this:- "I've got a machine for you if you want it." "What sort is it?" "Singer" "What model?" "Don't know, you'll have to tell me." "Hand machine or electric?" "Don't know." "Is it a black one?" "Don't know. Haven't taken the lid off yet." This is where I started yelling in disbelief. We went to his car, and I was expecting a run of the mill wreck. When he opened the boot the first thing I spotted next to the case was the old foot pedal. Disappointment was about to take hold, and then I saw the hand crank, the genuine Singer part, not reproduction rubbish, lying on the floor of the boot. All was not lost. Then he took the lid off.
This is what the machine was like when I got it. It was a bit dusty and lacklustre, with a melted bobbin winder tyre (I've not seen the like before or since) and (to my eyes) the odd, unbalanced look that a machine has when it has been deprived of its handle.
Here is the rear view. The old motor is so ugly.
And here is the top view. You can see that the decals are in good condition. All this machine needed was to have the terrifying old motor and light taken off, the handle back on, and a thorough cleaning and oiling.
So it was time to make a video, which is the sewing machine version of The Ugly Duckling. This 99K is now one of the machines that I could not do without. So a big thank you to my friend Phil, for finding it, and thank you to Stacey for hosting the linky party. And hello to the latest follower, Deb. Thank you for joining!
It's always a thrill when you find that an old machine has the manual with it. If I haven't got the manual I just oil every obvious place. I let the machine soak up the oil for a couple of days, turning the wheel now and again to check progress.
With this machine the real fun came with the threading, because it is so unlike all my other machines. Luckily I found this video, which brought the instructions to life. It shows the same model of machine in a treadle. I just sat there wondering why other manufacturers didn't incorporate a brake on the treadle. Ingenious stuff.
If you are in Britain, the season has arrived. Make the most of the Seville oranges while they are in the shops... they will only be there for a month to six weeks...
This evening I was delighted reading the lovely comment left on Youtube by a lady in Venezuela. British culinary tradition lives on in South America! The wonders of the internet. Many thanks to Nola in Australia for identifying the lace on yesterday's doily as netting. Today I dug out my copy of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Needlework (a reproduction copy), and sure enough, there were the illustrations showing netting. The illustrations were a bit tiny, so without Nola's help I'm not sure I would have arrived at the right answer.
Work has started on the little dresses, using the turquoise batik that Sew Scrumptious Louise brought round here. With my machines there is no such thing as zigzagging or overlocking, so seams are made the old fashioned way. French seams take a lot of hard wear and washing and are ideal for children's clothing.
Here is the latest video, showing how to make a French seam quickly and easily with the help of the seam guide. And for the sharp eyed, you can just see what is stamped on the slide plate, the date of the patent for Singer's vibrating shuttle machine - 1886.
When treadling, you spend 99.99 percent of the time looking straight ahead and concentrating on the stitching. However, for the occasional split second you need to cast a quick glance at the wheel. When pausing or starting you need to make sure the wheel never turns in the wrong direction. You can't always guarantee you can get your right hand to the wheel quick enough, so looking out of the corner of your eye is essential.
Keeping your feet dead still when not stitching is pretty important too. It's all on the video!
..but this one did. This is my Vickers Vibrating Shuttle machine. It needed a good clean and polish when I got it, and ended up looking beautiful. The metal really shines, unlike the Frister and Rossmann, which will remain forever dull, however much it is polished. The Vickers, however has an ill-fitting back slide plate - which just goes to show that all these old machines have their quirks. Often a battered machine turns out to be a brilliant runner, so it gets used and battered a bit more, whereas a well preserved machine hasn't been used much because it had an irritating feature, like a plate that didn't fit properly.
Either way, there is no better way to get to know your machine than by giving it the full treatment. Here is Part 2 of yesterday's Youtube epic.
It hadn't been used for a long time when I got it. It was a bit grimy and stiff, and over about a fortnight I cleaned it up. This is the machine that I learnt so much from. Once it was oiled and running it was an absolute joy to sew with.
Eventually I made the Youtube videos to show that with very basic equipment, anyone can clean up an old sewing machine - provided it isn't rusty or otherwise too far gone. You don't need a workshop and fancy tools. I do all my tinkering on the dining room table - well covered with old newspaper of course.
Free motion work is a bit of a leap into the unknown. Not only do you have to get used to the fact that the machine can work in any direction, also, if you use only vintage machines, you have to shake off the notion that only modern fancy machines can do it. It is about three years ago that I started looking on the internet at what was possible with vintage machines. Imagine my delight on realising that I had the right model of treadle sitting in the house all along - it just needed a good clean up. Then I discovered the wonderful Leah Day, the undisputed Queen of Free Motion Quilting. There are too many patterns on her blog for me to try out in the years I have left to me. Leah was wise - she started young. Leah's Youtube videos are fantastic. They show you everything you need to know about how to move your hands and manage the movement of the work through the machine. Leah took care of the hands, but treadling is equally about the feet.
This is the lady to watch, doing free motion embroidery for handbags. Her feet do not stop, she just keeps on going at an even speed. She's so good at it she can take her eyes off her work and look up and smile at people. Leah Day and the anonymous Laga Lady clinched it. Between them they launched me into free motion quilting on the treadle.
If you want to try free motion quilting on a vintage machine you need a Singer 15. There were many minor variations over the years, for example, different stitch length levers, and on some the feed dogs drop. My treadle is a basic Singer 15K (K just means it was manufactured in Scotland, in the factory at Kilbowie). Singer 15s are easily recognisable by the tension discs, which are on the faceplate at the back.
The bobbin is held in the bobbin case directly below the needleplate. This is the central bobbin mechanism, and it is this method of stitch formation which allows the movement of the work necessary for free motion quilting. Many other manufacturers made machines based on Singer 15s, in particular in Japan after the Second World War. These machines are equally suitable for free motion work.
For a good look at this type of machine, you may want to watch the video with the threading instructions. So if you have a treadle or electric Singer 15, or another manufacturer's copy, and want to have a go at free motion quilting, give it a try!
Yes, it's free motion quilting time. It's a bit like jumping into cold water - you have to brace yourself. Then after a few days' practice you just stroll over to the sewing machine and casually blaze away for ten minutes and another section is completed.
Making the video was fun. I will just let you imagine my feet. My slippers kept slipping off so they were held in place with strips cut off an old pair of tights. Also the lighting is tricky on wet November days and I managed to drop a lamp and smash it. All in a day's work.
This beautiful Little Vesta, dating from the 1920s or 30s, had the honour of making Little Red Riding Hood. It seemed to me to be the perfect project for this machine, and was the first item made with with it for decades.
It is a tiny machine. Sitting the doll next to it makes it look even smaller. I found this machine over twenty five years ago in a second hand furniture shop. It was not until we had the internet that I found out where Vesta machines were made and who by. A good twenty years or more after buying it, I finally hauled it out of the cupboard and cleaned it up.
The next thing to do was try it out. I was not disappointed, it makes a perfect stitch. Then came the video. It all took on a flavour of Watch With Mother with Little Red Riding Hood at the end. Perhaps I should make another rag doll one day soon. When I do, I will use this machine again.
