things present

I've been residing in Holland again since 1990. There is one particular advantage to this when it comes to sewing: an open air / public market twice a week till noon all year round except public holidays in the city i live in.  So i have managed to accumulate an enormous amount of beautiful fabric which barely fits in one floor to ceiling cupboard. I can almost start my own fabric stall, so i do not allow myself to buy anymore fabric at this point until i have used up some of the fabric i all ready have. But when i do see one more beautiful piece of material for a market price i do still make exceptions ;-)

Another thing i acquired some years ago is my indestructible sewing machine: an old fashioned Pfaff 362. A colleague suggested i get one of these machines after we both received a garbage bag each full of leather scraps from a local furniture factory. And yes this semi-industrial machine from the 60's can sew  leather easily even if this device is half a century old.  A wonderful machine with no plastic-fantastic parts of which sewing machines are made today. Afterwards i bought 3 more of  these machines on the Internet with the idea to start a sewing class, but i never did due to lack of time. So i intend to sell 2 of these machines and keep the newest ones when i get around to that eventually.

My latest purchase this spring was an adjustable dressform / mannequin. My first one after more than 30 years of sewing! I  bought this secondhand mannequin on the Internet because it is a special one and i cannot afford the oh so 'special' new price. It is a Casoli, an Italian dressform and i love the design of it. It looks great on its sturdy stainless steel stand  and the fun thing about this mannequin is the additional feature of an adjustable bust: it can be pushed out by 2 levers below the form to adjust bust size even more but they also go up or down i.e. take gravity into account for sagging bust points ha ha ha. When i purchased it, the dressform was covered in its original red elasticized smocked cotton cover, but this cover was old, faded and stretched out. I replaced it with a cover made from a stretchy wool blend fabric. The mannequin is adjustable from an approximate size 8 to 18 by turning the knob on top of the dressform. The size is displayed on the small plastic frame in the neck when you turn the knob, they are Italian dress sizes but easily converted. I will also be using this dressform to photograph my sewing projects, this way it will be about the design of the clothing and not the person in it.

 I will start with my sewing projects from the past, that is to say the ones that are still hanging in my closet or on my clothing rack and have not ended up in the good-will bag even though there was nothing wrong with them. If i had kept all my sewing projects I've made over the years i'd probably need a walk-in closet the size of my present sewing room.  Letting go of the things you cherish is part of life too, plus will make room for new sewing projects still to come.

Some of the photo's of the sewing projects in the posts of this blog are and will be also published on pinterest; https://www.pinterest.com/fabSEWnista/