Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Disintegrating fabric

I have a doll, which I love dearly. My mother made her for me when I was little. So of course, I brought her to Germany with me. However, she is starting to move from "well-loved" to "falling apart" and I am getting a little bit worried. Her arms look like this:

The fabric is disintegrating horribly, but I can't think of a way to fix it! I have applied fray check dozens of times, but that hasn't helped. I think if I tried to patch or darn it, it would just pull away from the stitches, right? Does anyone have any ideas, or should I relegate poor Laura to a display item only?

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Sewing machines in the ground

One of the great things about Freiburg is how old and beautiful it is. One of the ways in which Freiburg is special is these stone designs:
There is one in front of almost every store, and the design usually tells you what is inside the store. (There are a few cases where the stone sign is wrong because the newest store didn't want to spend the money to replace it.) This is the sign in front of a little store called "The World of Handwork" where I bought a ball of yarn. I hope that I will be able to be finished with that project soon, so I can show you all. I will be doing some traveling in the next week, so perhaps when I get back I will be all done!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Technikmuseum in Berlin

There is a museum of technology in Berlin. It's incredibly large! I agreed to go because I thought K would really enjoy it, and I had nothing against seeing old trains, airplanes, and so on. To my surprise, there was a lot of sewing related stuff as well! Here are a few photos from the day.

 This enormous loom can create several ribbons at once. Each ribbon has a different pattern, too!

 The loom runs on punch cards. I had no idea that was a thing.

 One of the finished ribbons.

 A vintage Singer you could touch.
 It also had a description of how sewing machines work.

 This machine turned the threads from the spools below into a thicker cord.

 A machine for hat making.

 This machine was so pretty. I wanted to keep it. I believe it was used for making sails.

This machine is the monster one. Those proportions you're seeing in the photo are real. It was huge! This one was used to sew multiple layers of thick sailcloth. Imagine what you could do with a machine this size! (Answer: anything!)

That's not all my photos, of course, but those are the sewing highlights of the technical museum. If anyone is ever in Berlin, I would recommend it. (Caveat: the signs are mostly in German only.)

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Settling In

I am finally starting to feel properly moved into this place. There are so many things that are new and different and so many things that are just the same. With that said, I can handle the differences, even the ones that I think are objectively bad rather than just different, like cat vomit staying in the stairwell for a week.

I have several sewing-related pictures to post which I acquired over the course of my travels. German tailor shops like to put vintage sewing machines in their windows. It's adorable. And I spent a day at a museum of German technology which has some incredibly interesting old looms and things.

Lastly, I am working on a creative project which some of my new friends inspired me to try. It's not a sewing project, but not totally off-topic either. Once my camera batteries are charged I will post pictures of that too.

Blogs I read