Time's passed

It's been a very long time since I appeared here, partly circumstance and partly an inability to make my photos upload. Let's see if I can make my new toy give you a feel for the last six months!

A chair stripped and rebuilt for one of my sewing students, originally upholstered in 1916 in Manchester, probably for the lady's grandmother.

A reversible coat for one of my fellow upholsterers.

A trip to the Lake District.

Coming next, competition at the local show.

Selling chairs

With Tuesdays full of people sewing and Thursdays full of upholstery I don't seem to get all my chores done and I'm struggling to find time to visit here, never mind read all my favourite blogs. I've also finally got around to setting up an E-bay account to sell off some of our better stuff. I'm not really clear how it works and somewhat sceptical about the possibility of earning more than the 99p you're encouraged to put as your starting price. With thousands of listings I wonder how anyone finds anything!

This pretty caned chair is my latest piece of work, though I grant it's not upholstery. Learnt at the same class and very satisfying. The chair was given me by my in-laws as a possible project but they don't want it back - even repaired - and we don't need another occasional chair... For your information, you apparently pay for caning by the number of holes in the chair. That's 80 in this instance, and it's not £1 a hole - though our teacher refrained from telling us what she did charge. So I shan't be popping it on E-Bay for 99p!

Sadly I'm unable to make the system load a picture, may try again later but I need to get suppr organised so I can watch Strictly and Dr.Who!

(Since I can now add photos I thought I'd better add the cane chair! 12.08.14)

Prom frock

Ready to roll! It's tonight and she's going in a friend's father's Jaguar - hopefully it is a better plan than Eldest's fire-engine which was fun but late.

Workshopped

I'm sorry! I've been reimagining my spare/sewing room as a working space and I’ve held my first workshop: I had five paying customers and they all said they would like to come again! I am a happy lady!


Three of them made bags (using my samples as inspiration), one a simple dress with a shirring elastic bodice for her teenager and one embarked on a frilled top for her 6 year-old. There was a spectrum of experience/ability/confidence/perfectionism, which made it interesting for me, and they all claimed they’d learned something they’d not known.

When I was taught to sew at secondary school we all had to make a bag to keep our sewing in, then a roll in which to keep our science instruments, and finally a smocked apron with shell edges on the ties (for our mothers) before we were let loose on an actual garment. At that point we were taught to use tailor’s tacks, pin then tack seams before we could machine stitch, and generally do things properly! It was interesting to watch the various techniques these largely self-taught ladies used: most were determined to put pins in every inch and take them out as they were reached. I confess I rarely do more than the occasional pin and then I put them at right angles to the seam and sew straight over them. This is a risky strategy since if you hit a pin you will break your needle, bend the pin and ruin your machine (i.e. don’t try this at home!). However, I have had my machine since the fifth form and it does me fine. Obviously I don’t need pins if I’m sewing in straight lines nor for most seaming, but perhaps for attaching a collar or setting in a sleeve. In industry there isn’t time to mess about with pins and tacks if you’re going to earn your piecework money, you need skill and practice. It isn’t wrong to tack and/or pin of course, but I hope to increase 'my' tutees skill levels so that they don’t always have to.

I’m looking forward to next week’s session now – though I must get Youngest’s prom dress made by next Friday or there’ll be trouble!

Vintage family

These are the wedding outfits, one dress suit made (by me) for a wedding in 2007 and one (by mother) for a wedding in the 1960s! (Luckily Youngest has no pre-conceived ideas about Crimplene.) A beautiful, intimate late afternoon and evening affair the wedding was a privilege to attend.

I have no pictures for the Church Fete. The weather, which had been promised to be fair all week, was in fact chilly and overcast, but luckily people turned out in goodly numbers and it remained dry such that we sold out of food and booze and a jolly good time was had by all. I maintain that this is a village party first and a church fund raiser second, but it was pleasing to make the second best grand total to date.

“I don’t realise how much I miss you guys until I see you,” said Eldest as we shared a picnic on Saturday evening. Husband and I travelled to Oxford to attend the last night of a play performed in the grounds of Worcester College – on their lake! – for which Eldest was Stage Manager. She is thoroughly engaged in life at university, but in Maths and backstage management – not parties and boys! She might be home in September, and will manage a few days of the family holiday in France, but is otherwise engaged over the summer with a university production that they are taking to the Edinburgh Fringe…

We are happy that she is happy, but, may I say to those of you who have yet to get to this stage, it comes as something of a shock that your offspring have other things to do and you are pretty much irrelevant! Make the most of the time you have with them because it flies by. As my mother remarked: “And…?!”

Update

I am of course busy with a chair, a sixties version of the fifties one I did recently. I think it may become a wedding present for Husband’s friend and godfather to Youngest. (A happy second marriage for both parties.) And today I was asked by an acquaintance to look at a chair with the prospect of my reupholstering it – though she’s only after a quote having already had one which she presumably considers too much!

I have put an advertisement in the parish mag offering two sewing workshops at the end of June with the view to starting classes in September. No idea if anyone will bite.

Eldest, a clever girl, has had two parcels delivered home this week that she needed in college. She promises to look at delivery addresses more carefully next time.

Youngest starts her GCSEs tomorrow with Religious Studies. I have no idea whether she’s done enough revision, questions from her parents result in much eye-rolling but little information.

Our hall is looking terrific but there is still decorating to do and the sewing room and girls’ room are overflowing with extraneous furniture, papers and donations to the church fête – which is still a month away!

AWOL

I’m sorry I’ve not been to visit here, and failed to visit everybody else, but I have been busy ‘doing’.

Father’s chair is complete and will be delivered this weekend. Friendwithmatchinggirls’ curtains are all altered for her new house and will be delivered tomorrow. I have been out lifting and dividing perennials in my garden where spring has finally sprung: there is frogspawn in the pond and daffodils, pulmonaria and primroses flowering in every direction. The washing's gone out on the line at last. The hall and landings are being decorated so we're living in a certain amount of chaos, but it will be lighter and brighter - and cleaner!

Now, have you been watching The Great British Sewing Bee? (And yes, I thought they were spelling bees, I’m not sure about sewing ones.) It’s Bake Off with sewing. Thing is, I’m definitely part of the target audience as both a seamstress and a keen viewer of many cooking programmes, and I know it’s early days, but it’s not right yet… I want more information about the tasks and how they should look, I want closer detail of the stitching they’ve done so that I can better understand what’s right/wrong about it, and I want a better rapport between the three presenters. Did Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood get it right at the start? I don’t know as I didn’t watch the first series, but they give down to earth feedback without it seeming as though they are trying not to be scathing – I feel the nice lady from the WI and the smart tailor don’t even have a passion for sewing in common. Claudia’s cute but a bit too random in her comments, without the humour that is Mel and Sue. Episode three of four is tonight on BBC2; I hope it gets another series, but with amendments. Watching Paul Hollywood making bread last night affirmed how beautifully food is now photographed at all stages; it would make all the difference if they could do the same for stitching.

Getting on

Time for a spot of show and tell:

The curtains in Eldest’s room are finished and hung.

The kitchen chairs are oiled and recovered.

The next project...

...is underway.

Blanket box

One blanket box completed, one set of curtains hung though not hemmed and six chairs given two coats of clear oil. Progress!

This week's task: to stay calm while helping Eldest to decide what to take to university.

Revamp

Eldest and I painted her room in July. When we moved in she was 10 and I did a jolly yellow with patchwork curtains. As she’s grown her room has needed more and different furniture (extra bookshelves, not a high bed with a desk under it, and so on) and it was time to update the look. We’ve ordered a tiny sofa from Laura Ashley (her birthday present) to replace the single bed ‘sofa’ that was taking up too much floor space. She bought herself a blanket box which she has painted and I am now to recover the top. And make new curtains of course. Fabric is purchased: the pile awaits.

I have a blanket box of my own waiting to be recovered. And our kitchen chairs have been stripped of aged varnish after 35 years in my ownership (ex-Army quarter furniture bought for my student flat). They need oiling and the seats covering with newly purchased PVC. I’m a bit busy!

Subject?

I don’t seem to have written much of late. Part of me thinks this is a good thing as, I’ll confess, faced with a lengthy post, I am liable to skim unless it’s gripping/well written/funny; and I can’t be the only one. So unless I’ve been inspired by something specific this is more like a diary of events… and I don’t really do events, just daily life in my corner of the world. This too may be a good thing: there is something comforting about reading about life going on as usual when the news is almost always grim: disaster not success, death not birth. But I suspect blogging should have more of a point.

I should be showcasing my stuff for sales – writing/cooking/craft – or hoping to get noticed – a book deal for my brilliant idea a la Julie and Julia – or something witty and erudite to save the world. Ha!

Meantime you’ll have to put up with a photo of something in flower in my garden/a piece of furniture/a cake, and a brief note to tell you I’m still alive.
I am!

Being a Happy Mother

I may not be doing well at keeping an interesting and informative commentary on the life of this hausfrau, but I have had a busy week:

I have turned 10 sad, pilled cushion covers into 5 revamped ones for  Friendwithmatchinggirls for a small fee.

I have cleaned and tidied the bits of the house that show for a fete meeting on Friday and a supper party last night; making apple and walnut muffins for one and liver parfait, beetroot and orange soup, chocolate, chilli and walnut braised beef and an iced raspberry soufflé in a chocolate case for the other.

I have bought fabric for my new upholstery project, finished stripping back the chair so I could mend the springs and started the refurbishing task.


Oh, and I’ve promised the chair to Oldschoolfriend for the cost of the components. She has just embarked on a major upgrade of her house and is feeling down at the enormity of the disturbance to her home which is such that it makes relaxing at the end of the day impossible.

Today I have received cards from my girls and rather different rewards for being their mother: Youngest gave me two bars of chocolate that she’s rather hoping I’ll share and deigned to provide quality time by helping me to clean and tidy (her mess from) the room in which her Spanish Exchange student will be sleeping come Thursday. Eldest, on the other hand, has taken over the kitchen today. We were given eggy bread with fried apples followed by ginger and pear muffins for brunch; are shortly to be called to treacle soda bread and honey for tea and are to be treated this evening to a three course supper that she has been planning all week!

Updating

 So far so so on the loose cover.

 So nearly finished on the nursing chair.

And I'm off to upholstery class to sort out this modern M&S chair which my neighbours were stopped from taking to the tip. So it's mine if I want it. Not sure, but thought it would be good practice and couldn't accept that it was rubbish!

Progress

Lots of pinning, some stitching and ten metres of piping made: it is progress at least!

(See yesterday's post for the background.)

Taking a leap

A date never happens again because it is simply a measure of time, but the 29th February (if we miss out the year) happens only every four years. So, if it’s an anniversary of something significant to you, I wish you a very Happy Leap Day!



I am a fan of the PM programme on Radio 4, especially when Eddie Mair is in charge. Leading up to today he has been encouraging his listeners to ‘take a leap for PM’. People are doing an enormous range of things from getting in touch with someone they’ve fallen out with, to eating chocolate (she is a recovering anorexic), leaving the house (he’s agoraphobic) to travelling home (he’s been serving in Afghanistan). As ever it is an eclectic mix of the personal, the laudable and the funny – it was Eddie Mair who got the nation sending in bursts of the Upstairs Downstairs music played on every instrument and in every music style as light relief to introduce the financial reports (nicknamed upshares downshares what else?) during the spiraling recession. (Madly we own a copy of the compilation made to raise funds for Children in Need.)


I have been putting off tackling a loose cover for a rather sad armchair that a friend has asked me to complete – another friend had started the job: the fabric had been cut into most of the pattern pieces and a piece of foam bought for the seat cushion which no longer exists. I have only once made a loose cover – for the little nursing chair I’m now reupholstering – and was not best pleased with it. Making clothes for a chair ought to be similar to making clothes for a person, but to look anything like they need to fit extra snuggly and be piped along some of the seams. It has been brooding in my sewing room watching me avoid it since September. Today I will make progress!

Missed opportunity

I left work nineteen years ago. I had a career in management in the clothing industry, first in production and later in sales. To get there I went to college and studied Clothing Management, a four year Diploma recognized by the industry and becoming degree equivalent after a further two years in a ‘responsible management position’. I was a career girl for eleven years and didn’t consider other possibilities before I met Husband. Having spent our first two years of marriage living in different counties we decided not to live in two different countries. We took the view together that we would want to bring up our hoped for children ourselves and we wanted to share a home. I gave up work as the one of us who would have said children and followed HM Forces directions to Germany.

While I have occasionally set out to explain just how much parity I had with Husband at the time I chose to stop paid work, mostly I haven’t regretted my decision: I am lucky to have a busy and happy life and a family of whom I am proud. Despite gentle teasing from Husband and Mefromafar I have found no motivation to return to paid work.
I remind you of this because I recently applied for a job! A Textile Technician at the local comprehensive: no pupil contact, just supporting the Textile Teacher by tidying and advising on ordering her fabric and commodities, threading machines and filling bobbins, setting out the classroom , cutting out fabric as required and being very flexible for a whole five hours of employment on two days. It sounded like something right up my street that I could do standing on my head and that would fit in with all the other things I do, so I applied.
I was invited to an ‘informal interview’. Unsure what such a term meant I concluded that either I was the only applicant, or there would be some sort of practical test of my sewing machine and fabric knowledge. I was wrong. Five ladies turned up at the same time with the same invitation. We were divided into two groups taking it in turns to be told about the job by the Head of Department and given a tour by the Textiles Teacher. There was no test and no individual interview. The other woman in my group had also been in the industry, as a Fabric Buyer. Younger than me I think, and less managery, so, if I’d been the teacher choosing between us, I’d have picked her as qualified but less of a threat (cynic!). I didn’t get a real impression of the other three though the teacher implied they weren’t from the industry, but capable crafters.
Apparently school had been surprised to receive ten applications and called in five of them. They remarked that they didn’t know how they were to decide and we should all be proud to have got this far… I don’t know how they were going to decide either, but I haven’t heard anything more and must presume they selected one of the others.
My armour is undented: flexible hours may have been me being flexible, i.e. required on Mondays and Wednesdays when I currently volunteer in the primary school; a behind the scenes job that would still need me to change out of my jeans for a couple of hours but into something I could climb in (lots of high shelves to sort) and not worry about fabric dust; little contact with the rest of the DT staff because of working when the students aren’t there; debatable whether there would be opportunity to expand the role… I sound relieved don’t I? I am!

Relief not panic

Youngest will go to Madrid, Spain this afternoon. It’s an exchange through school: we will have a Spanish girl to stay in March. There ought to be worry and perhaps panic; instead there is only relief!


We had an active half-term and did nothing you could call useful: a blustery walk to Old Harry’s Rocks, a trip to see a ridiculous film (The Three Musketeers, at which Youngest cheered and the rest of us laughed derisively), trawled the charity shops for items to be turned into three costumes for the school play, read the newspaper, fought over the puzzles, tidied the garden after the builders and before the greenhouse turns up…
And this week has been busy: school, tidying for Swedish visitors, altering aforementioned garments to make a day dress, beachwear and an evening gown that look vaguely 1920s, a coffee morning spent filling Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, upholstery (still taking out staples!), and finding suitably British presents to send to Spain. Not to mention that ballet is back of course and Youngest has been out babysitting two nights, had two after school rehearsals for said school play (The Boyfriend) and been to Rangers – a bonfire party last night.


Let’s face it: the family has been through two French Exchanges, went to Madrid earlier this year and Youngest went to Switzerland in the summer. Sending Youngest to Spain to an unknown family in somewhat of a rush is just a relief all round that she’s off! Except that this is Youngest: when we got in the car to go to school this morning she burst into tears, and again when I left her there. She managed some watery laughter in between, and she will be fine, she will love the experience and get on with the Spanish family regardless. She is good at making friends.


When she went to France Husband had to actually go to put her on the bus (as opposed to them leaving from school). Stood waiting to wave her off the mummies around him were discussing the poor girl in bits on the coach and how they wouldn’t be sending her, they’d be whisking her home at once, it was just too cruel… I told her this story on the way this morning, it made her laugh because she’d had a wonderful time. She’ll be fine, and she’s back in a week, hardly worth tidying her room!

Prized

So, all sorts of news:

Both the doll and the devil won first prize, and the doll’s outfit won best in show and, thus, a cup!
Do not get excited! Each entry cost 30p, that’s an outlay of £1.20. There were lots of liqueurs and mine got nowt. Two first prizes netted 60p each… So I broke even… Except that I am requested to get the cup engraved with my name… Cost unknown…

It rained rather in Dorset, but there was more fine weather than wet, and just the change of scene, and reduction in the scale of the housewife’s chores made for a welcome holiday. We walked quite a bit, ate well, played Scrabble and Cluedo, fought over who got to do the puzzles in The Times and stayed in bed ‘til the end of the Today programme. Lovely! (The photo is a view taken in Arne.)


I have thought of several things to tell you about: AS levels, Geography, Lionel Shriver’s So Much For That, Glorious Mud, Church Fetes, and, probably more, but I think smaller helpings would help the digestion - and I need to catch up on what everyone else has to say!

Show time

It is holiday time and we’re off to Dorset in stages (Eldest goes with friends tomorrow, Youngest returns to the UK on Friday and we go Sunday), but before that I wanted to show you Eldest’s cake for her father’s birthday:

3, not 53, clearly

And my entries for the village show:

A dressed doll or bear: (the poor girl is over 40 but seemed pleased with her new outfit) dressed for a British summer!
Possibly a little over the top?



A crocheted item: a little devil who's a little underwhelming?



And two entries for the liqueur class: Sloe Gin and Apple Vodka…

Happy holidays!

Catching up

The birthdays were both deemed successful; the camping, fun.

Eurostar and the TGV to Lyon were brilliant. We had a busy trip, eating too well and all managing to speak a little French: it’s amazing what you can manage if everyone has to order their own food or go without.

Eldest got nine A* and an A.
My trainee teacher has started work.
My girls have gone back to school.


I AM ALONE IN THE HOUSE.


I may take the day off; eat chocolate with a good book; think in the sewing room; play in the garden… or perhaps just take delivery from Sainsbury, do the washing, tidy the sitting-room and catch up on what’s been going on on the blogosphere, all while listening to Radio 4 with no chance of anyone turning it off.