sewing machines

Ohmigosh, ohmigosh, ohmigosh…

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Slipped down to the Tip yesterday in a spare 10 minutes, Monday often being a good day after people have decluttered their attics at the weekend. Nothing obvious, so I climbed up to look in the Metals, and there, not 12″ from my hand, lay a very tatty industrial Singer… naturally it leapt straight into my arms. I could see a gigantic cracked motor and a rusty old footplate, which would be no use to me even if I could have taken them; was there anything else? A few moments anxious scanning revealed a bag of bits including the (broken) bobbin winder, and a thread stand out of reach, which Lee kindly hooked out for me. I grabbed anything else loose that might be vaguely sewing-related, and ran off, a mere 10 minutes late for my next appointment, hyperventilating gently…

It’s a Singer 96KSV7 from 1940. 96s were generally fast tailoring machines, but this one looks as if it’s been adapted (SV meaning Special Variant) to use heavy threads & thick fabrics, as it has a tension knee-lift and a higher shank than the only other 96 that has passed through my hands. There was a bit of very thick strong thread trapped in the shuttle race, and it has a massive needle fitted. Upholstery, maybe? I seem to have picked up most of the correct bits, and a few totally random ones too, but now I will have to find a treadle table to fit her, as I think this might well be the all-round heavy-duty machine I’ve been hunting for for my planned workshop. She stitches beautifully, from fairly-small to a gigantic 4 stitches per inch, and has reverse. I wonder how she’ll like quilting? There’s plenty of room under that massive arm.

When something like this falls into your hands, you know it’s just meant to be. I knew I needed to part with my 1895 Singer 15 Light Industrial (probable) sailmaker, as I know someone who needs it more than I do and will use it regularly to do something well worth doing. I’d been wondering how I was going to replace it for the little heavy-duty stuff I need to do, but someone up there was ahead of me, as usual. Now, what colour do you think she’d like to be next?

A real find...
A real find...

What a week for wombling in Wimborne!

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An excellent haul…

For a long time, we’ve needed a pair of bi-fold doors to fit across the opening from our tiny living room into our rather large conservatory. Single doors would have taken up too much living space, whichever way they opened. But I’d found it very hard to find readymade doors that fitted in with the style of the house, and bespoke doors were horrendously expensive. But bless their cotton socks, those fine gentlemen at Wimborne Household Recycling centre have done it again! There, before my very eyes on Monday, were a matched pair of sturdy pine bifold doors, with glassed-in uppers so we won’t lose too much light. I’m not too struck on the pattern on the glass, but it’s liveable and the girls actually like it. And it might be removeable, or we could just replace it altogether if it really grates. So all we need now is the hanging kit, which is a little more than £20 at B&Q – much more manageable than the £400 we thought we were going to have to save up. They need painting, to blend in with our decor and add to the (entirely theoretical) impression of space; I will post a pic when they’re done & up. Next cold snap, we’ll be laughing…

As I was clucking happily over the doors, someone offloaded a tent and drove off. Recognising the colours and the style of the bag, I inspected more closely; it was a Khyam Ultradome. Probably a couple of years younger than our old, much-loved Megadome but not as hard-used, it looked to be in decent shape so was popped into the capacious back of my Toyota Emina along with the lovely convertible (treadle/electric) Singer 201K in its oak cabinet. The Singer will be going off to Africa with TWAM, as will the almost-identical one picked up from a goodhearted Freecycler earlier on today. The Khyam will be going off to Devon with us inside! It’s a whole lot smaller & lighter than our big Gelert tunnel tent to transport, without being much smaller inside, and very much easier to pitch.

I have had it up in the garden for a closer look today, and apart from a small, easily mended rip on the porch, it’s in pretty good shape. The original guy ropes are gone, but we have a set of proper Khyam guys & pegs from our faithful old friend the Megadome. I shan’t feel so bad about taking that  apart now, as it will be helping this one give many more years of service, and since one leg strut got snapped by someone who didn’t understand how to pop them down, it really is past it now.  I’ll use some fabric from it to mend that rip, and take the integral groundsheet out to use in the living area of the Ultradome, which didn’t come with one. That’s one reason why we bought the Mega rather than the Ultradome, 13 years ago – you had to buy it seperately if you wanted one, and the tent cost well over £400 to start with…

So I’m happy with that, and with the biggish enamel saucepan (with lid) I kidnapped for dyeing in, the two little mesh windows from someone’s larder which will make fabulous deckles for papermaking & the little old ratchet screwdriver that ought to go off to Africa but which seems to have slipped somehow into my sewing machine tool box and obviously feels quite at home.

And I’m definitely beginning to get the hang of spinning now, and am turning out skeins of yarn that I actually want to work with. The dyeing & spinning experiments are going to be made into a “Granny Square” jumper – will I have it finshed in time to wear it next winter? Or will I be distracted by 101 other irresistible projects, like making myself a charkha out of a small, rescued box and parts from an old Saxonia sewing machine that really was at the end of its useful life? Watch this space for regular updates…

Bagged!

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Bagging at the Priests House...
Blissful – bagging in the sunshine…

Well, that was good fun! Jo & I set up our stall in the glorious garden of the Priest’s House Museum, on our one & only sunny summer’s day, and bagged to our hearts’ content. We gave away 30+ bags and made another 14, with assistance from various members of the public, as you can see. In fact, pleased as people were to be given a free, sturdy re-usable shopping bag made from reclaimed fabric, the machines themselves attracted a lot of interest and several people couldn’t resist having a go themselves. Which was exactly what I’d hoped for… I’ve offered to do another upcoming event down in Bournemouth, and been accepted with alacrity. So I’m cautiously hoping that this will prove to be a good way of catching people’s interest and getting the message across that something that has no value to you as it is shouldn’t just be thrown into landfill… Maybe you yourself can re-use it, with a bit of imagination, but if you can’t, someone else somewhere almost certainly can!

"Who, me?" Butter wouldn't melt in Tinkerbelle's mouth... but a sausage might!
Butter wouldn't melt in Tinkerbelle's mouth - but a sausage might...

Half the family are away in Wales at the moment so last night’s supper was cooked on the potbellied BBQ. Apart from realising that we need some kind of a guard around it to keep the assorted livestock from immolating themselves trying to get at our food, this was a great success; sausages and burgers cooked to perfection, followed by windfall apples baked under the tree they’d been growing on a few hours earlier. Sadly, though, finding an unopened packet of fondue forks at the Tip yesterday meant that toasted marshmallows were inevitable, and my skirt seems alarmingly tight this morning…

And Freecycle triumphs over Ebay, yet again. I missed out on an industrial sewing machine on Ebay at the weekend; I need one for the tough bits of my quilted bags as my dear old Jones zigzag is in serious danger of shaking itself to pieces every time I make one. I just forgot about bidding and it sold well within my upper limit. Kickself-worthy… but DH took the boys to the Bournemouth Air Show, and picked up two Freecycled machines en route. Blow me down, one turned out to be an early Singer 15, which is undoubtedly some kind of light industrial sub-model, built for strength rather than speed like the other two that have passed through my hands. Sometimes I marvel at how these things work out; I didn’t have to spend any money at all, the item I needed has found its way into my hands for free instead of being dumped! Many thanks to Tara, the donor, who nearly threw it out thinking no-one would want it as it isn’t exactly pretty, and DH for fetching it.

Just goes to show; one person’s “clutter” is another person’s opportunity…

Going public…

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This Saturday (30th August) I’m taking part in a public event under the Morsbags aegis. I will be taking my rescued Singer 201K treadle to the Priest’s House Museum and making Morsbags in situ. I’m also taking along a couple of handcranks, probably Singer 99s, & pre-cut & ironed bags so that people can have a go at making one themselves. So eldest daughter and I are crouched over my latest carbon-burning extravagance – a powered cutting knife – and churning out Morsbags for dear life this week. The lads at the Tip have been magnificently helpful, hauling out vast acreages of “blokey” curtains from the fabric skip so that not all the bags are flowery!

But that’s not all they’ve found for me. My sister-in-law will be gobsmacked to be told that she is now the proud owner of two large blue cast-iron casseroles, which will go nicely with her set of rescued saucepans. Different make, Nomar rather than Le Creuset, but it works… I’m keeping the other two, as they fit nicely side by side in my oven, whilst being bigger than my two orange ones! I can’t help wondering about the story behind them; who buys four big, matching cast-iron casserole dishes, which aren’t cheap, even if you bring them back from France, then chucks them out whilst there’s still plenty of useful life left in them? Possibly someone who’s raised a big family but is downsizing now… but I do wish they’d heard of Freecycle or Waste Not Want Not, our local recycle/loan group. There were good sharp cooking knives and other stainless steel utensils down in the skip beyond my reach, too; I could run an entire shop on what people throw out, if retail premises weren’t so expensive here. Although I have heard that our Chamber of Commerce aren’t very encouraging to that kind of enterprise; they feel it’s the wrong kind of “image” for our town… so somehow they have to be brought from seeing reclaimed stuff as “secondhand & seedy” to “cutting edge/environmentally responsible/high moral ground!” Or is that, and price, the basic difference between a junk shop & an Antique Emporium? Anyway, I could, and did, rescue a very nice butcher’s block, and a big Pyrex mixing bowl, which have both gone straight back into service in my nicely old-fashioned, workable kitchen. There were proper weighing scales, too, but only a few weights. I have two sets, so let them go to an older gentleman who, like me, was fed up with buying electronic plastic scales which become useless after a year if you’re weighing anything more weighty than slimmer’s portions. 

I also splashed out 99p on a rather nice little Singer 128K on Ebay locally. On going to pick it up, and mentioning that it would probably be going off to Uganda with Tools With A Mission, the vendor happily presented me with a free 99K too! What a lovely lass… Not to mention the two that I’ve “won” on Freecycle this week, too… But I can’t quite bring myself to hand over the 320K, complete with all its attachments, that turned up a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s dried out, I’m having quite a lot of fun with that and all the pockets of my children’s worn-out jeans… I’ll post a pic when it’s finished!

Waiting is hard…

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…but until my jigsaw is back from the menders, and it stops raining, we can’t finish the bale store. There are 5 pallets waiting to be transformed into a store for bales of hay & straw and a little “woodshed” to store logs etc. for burning. I appealed on Freecycle for some corrugated bitumen roofing, and was given some offcuts from someone’s new shed, which are absolutely perfect for the job. Anyhow, I shall just have to get on with some indoor creative recycling instead.

I’m a Morsbagger (Morsbags.com) which undoubtedly qualifies as creative recycling, but it’s not my only way of enjoying myself with a sewing machine. I like rescuing elderly sewing machines from our local Recycling Centre (aka the Tip) Freecycle groups and Ebay too, if they stay at rock-bottom price. Most get sent off with Tools With A Mission to Uganda, for someone to earn a living with; a few stay with me and one or two get sold on to raise funds to rescue more. However there is virtually no secondhand market for bog-standard machines (which are the most useful ones as you can still get parts for them) because they were made to last, and most of them did! And most people here prefer electrical machines… it’s nice to feel that something I can so easily do can give someone elsewhere a bit of hope and self-respect, as well as preventing the waste of a machine that still has plenty of working life left in it. I also love to make patchwork quilts, bags and other items with reclaimed textiles; it’s astonishing what people throw out. Not long ago I came across 7m of pure dupion silk in a skip; I’m still wondering about the story behind that, as it smelt strongly of seawater, which has now faded. Our local Scapstore is a great source of very cheap fabric too, mostly offcuts from interior designers & upholsterers.

Josie's quilt
Josie's quilt, made partly from my old maternity & working clothes.

Mending things should qualify as recycling. I was given a rather nice cantilevered sewing box the other day; it was missing a couple of screws and washers, which cost me a few pence at the local hardware shop. Now it’s back in working order I can use it to store some of the massive collection of lace, ribbons, bindings and other snippets of haberdashery that my mother had squirreled away over the years. My older daughter and I are happily embellishing bags and hats with it, but it may take us some time to use it all up! One day I’d like to make my living running a recycled creative textile workshop, but I’m not in the right place to do that just yet.

Ah well, time to go & restore some order to my temporary workshop, which has been rearranged for a game of Cluedo (with a secondhand set, naturally!) on a rainy summer holiday afternoon…