Sunday, March 29, 2009

Vintage dress recovery

It seems the vintage dress can be saved after all. The steps I took yesterday was successful, but the dress was still a little short today, in the back, so I re-pinned it, moistened it, and left it on the ironing board. I will check it again tomorrow, and if the body of the dress seems fine then, I will attend to the sleeves.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Oh dear...

Why is it that one repeats the same mistakes, with equally disastrous results? Shouldn't a bell go off somewhere, alerting you to the fact that this will not end well?

What did I do? I got a pretty late 1950's crepe dress from my aunt, which I was considering wearing tonight. Upon inspection I noticed a largish stain on the front of the dress, and in stead of pausing to consider the condition of the last vintage dress I tossed in the machine (which shrunk considerably, and  lost its shape), I decided that it probably would be fine if I washed the dress on a 30 degree silk program.

The dress came out of the washer some 2 - 3 inches shorter that it was before washing...

I have now pinned it into shape on an ironing board, steamed it very lightly, and I am just hoping the damage will be undone this way. 

Friday, March 27, 2009

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Singer attachments

I got this really marvelous Singer sewing machine as a gift from my mum in law; it's a low shank Singer, and as strong as they get. It will chew through several layers of denim without any sign of hesitation, stop, or painful sounds, all of which I was used to from my new Singer, which looked good, but was quite frankly not that great.

I have been browsing e-bay for a ruffler, and finally found a lot of attachments for singer low shank, and I thought, heck, I'll make a bid for it, even if I don't know how to use most of them. The seller listed the items in the lot, and driven by curiosity I did a search for some of the names, and I found this site, which lists every conceivable attachment for the Singer feather weight, which is also a low shank machine. This list is really great, as there are detailed instructions on how to use these mysterious looking attachments. Turns out I made a bargain :oD

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Layout changes

Having received merciless feedback from Marcus, I have now changed the background for my blog. 

Any thoughts, musings or opinion on the blog layout, how fast the blog is loading, user friendliness etc?

Monday, March 23, 2009

testing, testing...

I have decided to move my blog from blogdrive to blogspot, as it's easier to manage with blogspot, and hopefully I can post more pictures to the blog without running out of space.

Now I need feedback. Do you guys like the new layout?

For comparison please visit the original blog, and let me know what you think.