My antique sewing machine

It has occurred to me that I never blogged about my other main sewing machine, a Singer 28 which was manufactured in 1899. It is operated by a hand crank. Isn't it lovely?

Here's the hand crank that drives it. I thought it might be difficult to sew with only one hand to guide the fabric, but that really hasn't been a problem at all.

The bobbins aren't like anything else I've ever seen. Rather than being squat circular things, they are long pins which fit into a bullet-like "vibrating shuttle" that goes where a bobbin case would normally go. It's a bit of a pain to use because you can't look in and see how much thread is left without actually unthreading it, but the pins hold a surprisingly large amount of thread.

This is the bobbin winder. It flips up to touch the hand wheel when in use. There's a little cog mechanism that guides the thread back and forth across the length of the bobbin pin.

Here are two bobbins full of thread. They really do hold lots! It feels like they hold more than my modern bobbins on the other machine, but maybe they just last longer because the sewing process is slower on this one.

Obviously this machine does no fancy stitches because it's so old, but it can sew in a perfect straight line and that's really all I ask of it.

The beauty of this old Singer, apart from the fact that it is portable and requires no electricity or cables of any kind, is how much control it gives me. Because I'm cranking it by hand I'm obliged to sew slowly, and this gives me more neatness and precision than my electric machine. If a single stitch is out of line I can correct it before things get any worse. I use this machine for decorative top-stitching and any sewing that requires great accuracy, such as undersewing facings or repairing damage within an existing seam line, or sewing something very small such as a credit card wallet. I wouldn't be without it now.

Sewing patterns

We haven't had a proper frost yet, but it's getting very close and I've seen my breath on more than a few mornings. Our lawn is covered with fallen leaves, and we're taking in apples by the truckload from the big old tree in the back garden. Unfortunately many of them are bird-pecked or diseased (by what, I have no idea) so we are trucking them out to the organics bin quite frequently as well.

I am going through a clothes-making phase. Right now I'm trying to get a good fit from this (Simplicity 2917), which involves learning how to adjust it for my shape, sew princess seams, and make facings. I hate facings. Grrr. How do you make them so they don't flip outwards and just sit nicely on the inside of the neck opening like they're meant to? I have the theory, just not the practice.

It's obvious that this could be a very flattering shape on me once I get the pattern adjustments perfected, and my sewing techniques of course. Although I still love my old Singer sewing machines, I do think longingly of zig zag stitching abilities and wish I had an overlocker. That would make finishing off the seams so much easier...

I also dream longingly of being able to sew something like this (Vogue 2903) and have it look good on me. In my head, wearing a dress like this will also give me a figure to suit. Isn't it a pity clothes don't really work like that? Still, I'm buying this pattern and might give it a go at some time in the distant future, when I have become skilled enough to put it together without wasting the 10 metres of fabric it requires!

My new sewing machine

I got a new sewing machine yesterday! Well, it's new to me anyway. A quick glance at the photos will tell you that it's not actually a new machine - it is a Singer 201K, made in Kilbowie in Scotland in 1950 or 1951. (Fact fans: this was once the largest sewing machine factory in the world, at one point employing 12,000 people.)  The serial number on this machine allows me to trace it to part of a batch of 50,000 machines which were allocated to a batch on December 18, 1950, but I don't know if that was the end date or the start date.

This is a beautiful sturdy piece of machinery. It weighs a lot, and I'd struggle to carry it for any distance, but I firmly believe that it will outlast me and still be in working order when I'm long gone. This is in stark contrast to my modern sewing machine, which was fairly lightly used for three years and then broke. A small plastic tab snapped on the handwheel, rendering the whole machine useless until I can get a replacement, and none of the repair shops here seem hopeful of getting a spare for that particular part. In any case, although I loved that little machine and learned to sew properly on it, it's incapable of anything beyond light duty. Two layers of denim or suchlike would leave the little motor whirring in futile desperation as it tried to force the needle through the fabric and got nowhere.

In contrast, I am pretty sure the 201K would pierce bone if I was foolish enough to stick my finger under the needle when it's at full speed. Gotta be careful of my hands around this one! According to what I've read from various sewing or machine enthusiasts on the internet, this was the finest model that Singer ever produced and I should consider myself lucky to own one. It can't do fancy stitches - I can go straight forwards, or straight backwards, and alter the stitch length using a lever, but that's it - but what it does do, it does perfectly. The mechanical parts can be serviced by anybody, and the instruction manual gives details on how to do that. Singer makes the manuals readily available (it's great to see a company still standing by its old machines), and of course it churned out a lot of this model at the time so the parts can be found online.

The machine comes in a large lockable bentwood case, which I'm hoping to restore a little to hide the scratches. It has been fitted with an electric motor and light, and the motor itself is controlled by a curved metal bar which is fitted into the hole on the bottom right of the case, and moved by the user's knee. This is a change from the foot pedal that I'm used to on my other machine, but apparently it's easy to work with once you're used to it. The motor can be removed, too. The 201 was mostly an electric machine, but the 201K (made in Scotland) was catering for a European market where many homes were not yet fitted with elecric sockets. Because of this, the machine is belt-driven rather than gear-driven and that means it can be fitted with a hand crank or a treadle and used without electricity. Have to say I find that very tempting! By all accounts treadling is very soothing, and of course it's free to use and burns up a few calories too.

I'm short on bobbins at the moment, so I probably won't be able to get much use out of this machine just yet, but I've tracked down a couple of people who might have spare ones that they'll part with. Right now I just have one bobbin wound with emerald green thread, which is better than nothing but perhaps not the most versatile of colours!

Playing with rubber stamps

Since Craft2.0 I have taken a complete break from the sewing machine (despite having three projects for other people that I really need to get finished). Instead, I've been playing with cardmaking again. I love to use rubber stamps, so I used some of the proceeds from the craft fair to buy a new selection and some nice markers for colouring them.

Here are some cards made with a Penny Black cat stamp from their Critter Party set:





I love that one stamp can be used in so many different ways!

I survived Craft2.0

Craft2.0 was held in Christchurch today, and it was great! I brought along a selection of bags, purses, and jewellery [this last I had made before the last craft fair I did so was just a bonus offering for today]. Skry came with me and was my helper for the day, and did a great job fetching, carrying, helping customers, and generally being a great support for me. I couldn't do it without him!

The venue was at Our City, in an old building in Christchurch, which has lots of small rooms rather than one large one. This made for some overcrowding downstairs, apparently, but we were upstairs where there was a bit more room to breathe.


My jewellery. I could do with a more professional looking display, but it still sold pretty well.


Some pouches and purses.


More pouches and purses. The sets on the bottom right are matching pouches and wallets. I was quite astounded that they didn't sell today, because they are absolutely the nicest things that I had to offer, but I think I was sending out a, "Don't buy those," vibe because I want to keep them for myself. In particular I really didn't want the red set to go so that'll be added to my private collection tomorrow.


Ready for action, five minutes before the doors opened!


There was a constant stream of people coming through the doors for the four hours that the fair went on for, and I had a lot of customers. By the end of the day my pockets were bulging with notes and coins. Of course I didn't make a profit if you factor in how much I spend on craft stuff, but at least I'm funding my hobby!

Sew sew sew

Most of my spare time over the last couple of weeks has been spent making things for Craft 2.0, or thinking about making things, or procrastinating about making things. When it's over I probably won't want to touch my sewing machine for months!

Here are some of the things that I made yesterday and today (and sorry about the awful photography - I really do not have the energy to set up for photos after working all afternoon!). They are really cute if I do say so myself - I am half tempted to keep the light blue and cream set. The bag and coin purse are padded with fleece and lined with silk, so they feel really expensive and luxurious to touch.



Opened up so you can see the linings. The zippy pouches are lined in the same fabrics as the Teeny Tiny Wallets.


That'll do for today, I think!

Signed up for Craft2.0

I've signed up and paid for a stall at Craft2.0 this year - it's a craft fair and is being held in Christchurch on June 6th this year. If you're around, call in and check it out! I'll be selling fabric items and jewellery, but there will be lots of other sellers too making and selling all kinds of things. I'm really looking forward to it.

Here are some pictures of the types of things I'll be selling:






Hopefully it'll be a really fun day, I'll sell lots of stuff, buy lots of cool stuff from other sellers, and meet some nice people as well. This will only be my third time doing a stall, but I feel like I've got a fairly good idea now of how to prepare for this sort of thing. Expect to hear more about this topic in coming weeks!

Just popped in to say hello, and show off my new bag

I have been neglecting my blog recently (and my emails too - sorry folks!). I'm spending so much time crafting that I am not online much apart from the sewing sites and jewellery sites and the online handcrafted item selling sites.

Here's a bag that I made for a colleague's daughter-in-law, which he asked me to make based on one of hers that is falling apart. He hasn't seen it yet. Hope he likes it - and the daughter-in-law too, of course.
It's about 30cm wide and 20cm tall. I made it out of a lovely soft black gabardine fabric, brightened up with some pretty pink flower cotton from Michael Miller. It's all fully lined, even inside the pockets.

Lifting up the front flap reveals a full sized zip pocket on the front:


Inside there is another long zip pocket, and three patch pockets.

This bag holds loads of stuff - in the first photo above, it was padded out with two of my cardigans. It took me about three hours to make once I had figured out the pattern pieces that I needed (I have a little notebook that I am using for drafting patterns - bags aren't really that difficult once you have a grasp of inserting linings and inserting zips). I'll definitely make this style again, as I think it would sell very well.

A four-day week

A few weeks ago, I reduced my hours at my office job to 30 hours a week in order to have more time for the other things I do in life. While this means a fairly substantial cut in pay, having a four-day week is wonderful. I'm feeling more relaxed, more creative, and have started up my online shop again.

I've opened up a shop on ArtFire, which is an American-based online store for all kinds of handmade items. There are artisans there from all over the world, and the site is growing every day. It's free to join, and I recommend that you go there if you make your own things and want to sell them, or if you want to buy gifts that you won't find anywhere else.

The link to my shop is here:
http://DaisyhillDesign.artfire.com

From there, you can browse all over the site. There are some wonderful items, and great prices!

These days I have mostly been making...

... jewellery. I'm doing a stall at a school fair on Sunday, and although I hadn't planned to sell any jewellery at it I've now changed my mine. After finding a whole shoebox full of unsold jewellery from when we lived in Ireland, it would seem rude to ignore it now that I have the chance of shifting some! And rooting through the box inspired me to grab my beads and pliers and create some new things to go with the older ones.

Here are some I made earlier:












Hope I get some sales on Sunday!

Adventures on TradeMe

Over the last week or two I have been gradually building up my presence on TradeMe, which is the New Zealand equivalent of eBay. Only people in NZ and Australia are able to buy and sell there, but it is extremely popular, to the point where eBay wasn't able to get a foothold in the market here at all.

I've been trying to come up with things I can make which do not require vast amounts of material, and which are easy to ship. Jewellery would have been the obvious thing to start with, but the beaded jewellery market seems to be saturated here, so I thought I would carve me another niche. Baby gear with skulls on it seems to be an untapped market, and I truly believe there are customers out there who are crying out for such things. I can make bibs and burp clothes without using a huge amount of cloth, and I'm also making little gift tags which hopefully people will buy along with their bib orders.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get enough sales to at least pay for the cost of materials! It'll never be a big money spinner for me, but I'd like my hobbies to start paying for themselves for once.

Convertible Dress

While looking for something else last week, I saw a dress for sale which touts itself as the ultimate black dress - a dress that can be worn in many different styles, for many different occasions. It's not a new idea - there was a similar dress around in the 70s - but it seems to be in fashion at the moment. Although this sounded like a great idea, I wasn't keen to spent $300 on a piece of clothing, so I went online and looked at alternatives.

Having found a tutorial for making a similar dress, I headed to the fabric shop and picked up four metres of stretchy black material for $32, and got to work. Cutting out the pieces was dead easy - a circle of fabric for the skirt, two long wide bands, and a small narrow band. Because this sort of fabric doesn't fray, I didn't bother hemming any of the edges, so there are only two seams necessary - one to complete the circle and one to attach everything else to the circle. This should have been a doddle, but unfortunately my sewing machine threw a wobbler at the thought of sewing anything with a bit of bounce to it, and kept skipping stitches. I think I need a finer needle for this sort of work, so that it doesn't move the fabric down but pokes right through it. Anyway, I ended up hand-stitching everything, which is a bit frustrating but meant I was able to get cracking straight away.

Having assembled everything, it was time to figure out how to wear the thing. I haven't done this very successfully so far - I can twist it into lots of lovely styles, but most of them involve an awful lot of bare back, which isn't very practical if there's a bra underneath.

Anyway, here is today's style, which I will be wearing out later. If it all stays in place I might even try this in the office tomorrow. We haven't got our washing machine sorted out yet as we have to get a plumber to attach it, and I am running out of clean clothes, so something new would solve that problem!


Convertible dress - front:
Convertible dress - back (sorry about the crooked sleeves, didn't notice those at the time):For $32 and an hour's work I am pretty happy with it. I wouldn't have got anything more wearable for $300!

A few new jewels

Most of my crafty stuff is in storage at the moment, so I'm restricted in what I can do, but I was able to get a few more pieces of jewellery online. Here is my new etsy banner:

Actually, you know what, I am just going to make a jewellery blog instead. It shouldn't be related to our move to New Zealand so I really shouldn't be blogging about it here. Go to http://JennysGems.blogspot.com instead!