2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

This is my very lovely friend Sally Pointer's video on how to delay the need for darning by 'running' a heel before it goes - it's what our grandmothers would all have done - well worth doing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKKLOUNOHU

Cherryfudge

I have been going down rabbit holes of fingerless gloves: very much the sort of thing I'd like to be making if I weren't still battling the intarsia on the baby blanket. I admit I am afraid of my mistakes and have learned a lot of patience through knitting because I have spent so long putting a few things right. Row 11 of the intarsia is now done: there are 34 in total before I get to the marathon of steady plain knitting, but they will probably take as long as all the rest put together.

Meanwhile the government has kindly contributed the first few pieces for the baby layette. I love that nowadays these can contain organic or recycled materials. The baby him or herself has not yet put in an appearance but we are now into the run up to the big event.

I have deduced that not only do yarns multiply of their own accord, but patterns too. There is probably a correlation between number of knitting or crocheting friends/ mention of patterns or projects viewed/exponential increase in waiting list of patterns to attempt one day.

@TwibbleDee, your list is great! My sewing is 99% trying to find out why the machine won't sew so its actually quite encouraging to discover there are lands yet to be explored in which this becomes a mere 9%! There is hope for me yet!

Liverpool_Anne

Ohhh, I have found a 35% discount code for bsw, I have resisted but it's calling me

TwibbleDee

Cherryfudge said:

@TwibbleDee, your list is great! My sewing is 99% trying to find out why the machine won't sew so its actually quite encouraging to discover there are lands yet to be explored in which this becomes a mere 9%! There is hope for me yet!

I have a Bernina 930, which was the last model before they started introducing electronics. Mom bought it used for me and had it checked out in a shop.  I think in 15 years, I’ve had it just cleaned and oiled twice.  That thing has survived (in its case) being thrown 10 feet, and has never flinched.  Normally if it’s not working, it’s because I threaded wrong or turned a dial I shouldn’t have. 

Laura_Elsewhere

My treadle/hand Singer 28K was made in Glasgow in 1902 and has been serviced once since I've had it (since 1981), and it didn't actually need servicing but they had an offer on so we got all three of our Singer 28s done, one being Gran's and one her mother's, never serviced since new except that once. They made my sister's "full meringue" wedding dress and my ghastly bridesmaid's dress in miles and miles of silk in the 1980s, and I took one to university with me and made my ballgown on a friend's kitchen floor, and a friend's ballgown on a corridor floor, anywhere with enough space for all that fabric - my friend wore her ballgown to a Hollywood film premiere in London and somewhere I have a photo she sent me. 
I can use electric machines but I can't imagine ever bothering to own or even borrow one. The sole thing mine won't do that would be useful is zig-zag stitch for stretch fabric to make my own knickers more easily, but there is a 1902 attachment I could track down that would produce a zig-zag stitch; I've just never bothered

Also, it's gorgeous  

thriftwizard

(Off to check whether I have a zig-zagger I can send @Laura_Elsewhere... probably not, though!)

My main machine is a Jones 1909 Medium CS treadle which I adore. It's spent most of its life sewing sacks in a barn, is as highly decorated as a small fairground organ, and will stitch through just about anything, though the table's in poor shape. But it's in danger of being replaced with a Singer 99k treadle; all depends on which of them my young historical-costumer-maker friend would prefer. (The Singer's table is in better condition, but it's a smaller machine.) I also have 2 Berninas, a 1950s Minimatic and a 1080 (the one they use in schools & colleges) plus my big Pfaff, but that's thrown yet another wobbly & won't be back from the menders until into the New Year. That too will go through almost anything - except, apparently, !KEA net curtain - and is brilliantly versatile, but so touchy! Not to mention DD1's much-loved Singer 48k and my tiny Mundlos 77, a rare half-size handcranked machine, which has even been known to go camping with us. If that all seems a bit greedy, there are 3 of us stitching regularly here, and I sell some of the things I make, and do our local Repair Café plus assorted events & demonstrations.

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

(Off to check whether I have a zig-zagger I can send @Laura_Elsewhere... probably not, though!)

My main machine is a Jones 1909 Medium CS treadle which I adore. It's spent most of its life sewing sacks in a barn, is as highly decorated as a small fairground organ, and will stitch through just about anything, though the table's in poor shape. But it's in danger of being replaced with a Singer 99k treadle; all depends on which of them my young historical-costumer-maker friend would prefer. (The Singer's table is in better condition, but it's a smaller machine.) I also have 2 Berninas, a 1950s Minimatic and a 1080 (the one they use in schools & colleges) plus my big Pfaff, but that's thrown yet another wobbly & won't be back from the menders until into the New Year. That too will go through almost anything - except, apparently, !KEA net curtain - and is brilliantly versatile, but so touchy! Not to mention DD1's much-loved Singer 48k and my tiny Mundlos 77, a rare half-size handcranked machine, which has even been known to go camping with us. If that all seems a bit greedy, there are 3 of us stitching regularly here, and I sell some of the things I make, and do our local Repair Café plus assorted events & demonstrations.

Please colour me green with envy, @thriftwizard.  My mum sewed our heavy canvas tent, plus extensions, on her Singer treadle machine but gave the machine away(!) when I was a baby.  I believe she had several treadle machines, but she donated them all to the home economics department of a technical college.   

Yes, she regretted it afterwards.  Her sewing machine for the next 30+ years was a little, electronic, Japanese machine, which came in its own table and would bounce around if you went too fast.  I learned to sew on that machine.  The instruction booklet had me in fits of laughter because it had obviously been written in Japanese and then translated by someone who'd been handed a Japanese-English dictionary and told to get on with it.

Sadly, the table was so fragile that I gave it to a friend rather than ship it to the UK.  It wouldn't have survived the journey.  My mum gave me my current machine, a Brother, as a wedding present when I married Dumbo, the ex.  (That marriage was a mistake from start to finish.)

- Pip 

Laura_Elsewhere

PipneyJane said: My mum gave me my current machine, a Brother, as a wedding present when I married Dumbo, the ex.  (That marriage was a mistake from start to finish.)

But you did get a good sewing machine out of it, so not all bad!  

I work on the principle that M.I.'s previous marriage was worth it because we have his splendid son from that... 

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

PipneyJane said: My mum gave me my current machine, a Brother, as a wedding present when I married Dumbo, the ex.  (That marriage was a mistake from start to finish.)

But you did get a good sewing machine out of it, so not all bad!  

I work on the principle that M.I.'s previous marriage was worth it because we have his splendid son from that... 

True.  And the set of Le Creuset cast iron pots that my ex-in-laws gave me as their wedding present.

I like your thinking, @Laura_Elsewhere.

- Pip (I also got custody of Dumbo's dad's car, too, when he had to give up driving. An ancient Austin Metro, that survived two years after the divorce.)

Liverpool_Anne

I can't honestly think of anything useful I got from my ex, the wedding presents we got from his family he took with him when he left and his family cut me off completely so I never saw any of the lovely nieces or nephews again, but I was glad he was gone so I suppose that was a win