Tailored Garments

Tailored Garments
Originally uploaded by Vintage Granny

This little book is a treasure, and worth every penny I gave for it. It gives detailed, step by step instructions on tailoring, with emphasis on the tailored skirt suit. It was published in the 1920's I think.

The first time I tried my hand at tailoring was some 4 years ago, when I made a coach man's coat for my boyfriend, and I used a book called Couture Sewing Techniques, by Claire Shaeffer as guide. The Couture book was not bad, but this little gem outshines it. It has detailed drawings of each step, as well as very straight forward explanations. If any of you guys out there wants to make your own tailored jacket or coat, I recommend you to get hold of this book :o)

A Manual of Plain Needlework

plain needlework
Originally uploaded by Vintage Granny

I got this book off ebay a while back because I wanted a book on hand stitching techniques. I had never heard of the book, but the price was agreeable, and it wouldn't be a huge loss if the book turned out a disappointment.

The book is actually quite handy. It covers most of the things which may and often do cause headache when finishing garments, such as finishing seams, edges and openings. There's not much in here that's really new, but having it all in one volume is great. I do have other books with sections on hand stitching, but they are big and bulky compared to this slim volume.

If you click on the picture, you will be taken to my flickr account, which holds a few more pictures of the book.

Domestic Goddess

No one would ever call me a domestic goddess, I think. There's just too much constant mess in our home, and dust bunnies multiplying in corners and under couches. The recent good weather also tells me that the windows need to be cleaned. Sigh... I don't even dare think about how the apartment would look if it hadn't been for the fact that we ever so often have people visiting in weekends, and this forces us to clean.

So, no domestic goddess in the house cleaning department, but I do enjoy cooking, and I just have to share a link with you guys. BBC food has lots and lots of recipes, and also a decent section on indian food. I love indian, but having moved to rural Norway, indian take-out hasn't been an option, so I've had to try to figure out how to make my favourite dishes myself. Today I made chicken bhuna, and peshwari nans, the nan's courtesy of BBC Food, and it was just lovely. I found the recipe for the chichen bhuna on this jar. I tried to do a search for the recipe on their website, but it seems they didn't list it.

If you want to try it, here's how you make it:

Ingredients:

I onion finely chopped

approx 400 grammes of chicken, diced

1/2 jar of Bhuna Curry Paste

I box of canned tomatoes

2 teaspoons of tomato puré

approx 200 ml water

Fry the onions in a little oil until tender, mix in the bhuna curry paste, and add the chicken. Fry the chicken until sealed. Then add the rest, and let the dish simmer for 20 minutes. Serve with rice and nan.

Ha-ha!

As it turns out, it was possible to adjust the binder. There was a tiny screw holding it in position, and when I loosened it, I could move the binding attachment a bit to the left :o)

The Bias Binder take 2

A few days ago I had another go with the bias binder, with proper bias binding this time, and got the same result as last time. It seems that the binder attachment isn't properly aligned with the needle. This is very annoying, and I'll examine the binder closer, to see if I can perhaps move the binder slightly to the left. I also wonder if the attachment would be easier to use with a hand crank machine. When I use the binder on my 1960's singer, the binding seems to just miss the feed-dogs, and because of this, the fabric isn't properly fed. I am considering bringing the hand crank from 1908 down from the attic, and experiment a little. But not until I have finished the wedding dress I ought to be working on.

Competition

I browsed through some of the blogs I try to keep up with after work, and found that one of the bloggers, Bronny is offering up this completely yummy and very fitting embroidery, with the text "She who dies with the most patterns, is not stitching fast enough". Very fitting, as I feel a blush coming up just thinking of my stash of patterns. It's quickly approaching an embarrassing level, and if someone asks how many sewing patterns I own, I'm apt to lie. Not necessarily a direct lie though, but something along the lines of - oh, I don't know, perhaps 20. I haven't counted. I have of course not counted, but as one of my favourite books contain no less than 350 sewing, needlework and millinery patterns, it doesn't take a math genius to spot the fib.

I do intend to make most of the patterns though - eventually ;o)

Butterfly potholders

Butterfly potholders
Originally uploaded by Vintage Granny

Behold my latest creation.

I found some old potholder patterns online a while back, at tipnut.com. I had trouble deciding which ones to make first, but finally decided to make the butterfly potholders.

I used thick wool coating for wadding, just one layer this time. I haven't tested if that's sufficient, but if it turns out that it's not, I really don't mind keeping them just for decoration, as I already have the heart shaped potholders for everyday use.