My Bernina Minimatic

Best buy ever. A couple of months ago I read about the Bernina 707 on Kerry's blog. Out of curiosity I checked a popular Dutch Market place website to see if I could find any locally and there it was: for just 50 euros. Even though I didn't need an extra machine, I couldn't resist the bargain and I'm so glad to have acquired this little gem of a machine!

The Bernina 707 Minimatic is an incredibly solid, reliable avocado coloured machine. I had no idea that I could actually sew neat, straight seams until I got this machine. My new-ish Husqvarna produces seams with a slight wobble and I always thought my sewing skills were to blame. Apparently not. This 40 year old machine simply does it better. And with about 8 years of sewing experience I now know I don't need a machine that can do 463 different stitches that I'll never use. Just the regular ones will do, thank you. I have also learned that I should have looked (and tried) other brands before instead of sticking to the one I happened to have had my first sewing experience with!

I'm still in the process of getting to know the machine. I've already replaced the light bulb (the only non-working bit) which wasn't that difficult. But I still frequently need to look in the manual to check how to wind the bobbin and put it in the bobbin case in the correct way. I've used this machine quite a lot in the past few months, for piecing the blocks of my Spider Web Quilt (it's coming along nicely!) and it's been great so far! As to the colour, well avocado and cream has a nice retro-feel to it doesn't it?  :)

Embroidery Books from the Past

I've added a few older, second hand embroidery books to my collection in the last couple of weeks. I bought some vintage craft magazines too, which I will share in a separate post.

The book on the bottom of the stack is Anchor's '100 Embroidery Stitches'. A small but really useful book with clear diagrams.

Anchor is the name under which Coats sold, and still sell, their embroidery and craft threads. Originally there were two separate companies (Coats and Clark), but later they merged into one company. A lot of Anchor Embroidery books (on various subjects such as canvaswork and Spanish Blackwork) were published over the years. The copy I bought is probably similar to other editions they brought out. You can regularly find them on Ebay for just a few quid.

The DMC books (or rather: booklets) are very different in content. The one with the red cover has a good number of cross stitch designs of animals mostly. When I purchased it online I had mistaken it for an older DMC booklet, with border motifs and such from around Europe. So when the booklet arrived I was surprised to come across patterns of geese, ducklings and forest animals.

The insect repeat patterns are quite groovy though and I like the slightly kitschy stag too.

The other DMC booklet has an interesting variety of evenweave border designs. Both booklets do not have much information about the stitches and colours. You'd have to work straight from the pattern and photographed examples and just guess which colours to use. Or just choose your own which I prefer in most cases anyway. :)

P.S. A few things that I haven't got round to: putting some of my embroideries on sale in the shop and preparing a second blog post about the X and Plus Quilt (including a small tutorial). At the moment all of my sewing stuff and embroideries are packed up due to the rebuilding of the bath room so bear with me for a little longer! The whole house is covered in dust (it's EVERYWHERE) so I'm kind of glad my sewing supplies are safely packed away!

Vintage Patterns

About once or twice a year I get Vogart Embroidery Pattern Fever. I frantically search Ebay and Etsy for missing patterns in my collection. There are a lot of missing patterns in my collection so that makes searching easy but, true to my Dutch descent, I don't want to pay too much for them. Also I prefer some patterns to others and I especially like patterns with animals (who would have thought?!?!) and Fairy Tales too (see Hans & Gretel on the photo) although these are rare.

Nowadays you can buy copies of all these patterns (apparently that's legal?) but I want the real thing. Over the years I have also bought lots of vintage patterns that aren't Vogart patterns (because they were in the same lot on Ebay for example) like this one:

For women who sew it says on the back... so definitely not a pattern for men who sew ;) Anyway, the lion looks a bit freaky but that horse in the right bottom corner is pretty cute! So are vintage patterns your thing or do you happily leave them behind in yard sales?

p.s. Oh and by vintage I mean 'older than me' (which is before the 1970's) because as I understand it you can call stuff 'vintage' when it's only 20 years old!

Small heirlooms

This is an hand embroidered card my grandmother sent to my grandfather a long, long time ago, probably in the 1930's.  I'm assuming this took many hours to stitch and I'm delighted that it was kept safe for all those years and eventually ended up at my place. I have another card, also sent by grandmother to my grandfather and while it's not embroidered I thought it would be nice to share, with Valentines day just around the corner...

My grandfather was in the Dutch Indies at the time (now Indonesia) and my grandmother in the Netherlands, hence the telecommunication reference on the postcard. Apparently the guy in the picture is sending out an S.O.S.  :) 

Vintage find: Le livre que j'aime

This illustration is from a French Reading Book from the fifties that I bought recently. It's called Le livre que j'aime and it's just about the level of French I can handle reading so I might even learn a thing or two from the book. For some reason everything sounds better in French doesn't it? I was especially charmed by the fact that French Wolfs apparently say 'Hou!Hou!' and French Ducks say 'Coin,coin,coin'.

And how about this illustration! I bet this snowman is très froid. Wouldn't this image make the cutest embroidery pattern? Au revoir for now, I hope you enjoyed taking a peek in Le livre que j'aime.

Alice and Martha in the Mail + giveaway coming up!

Today two lovely packets arrived in the mail!

On the left a lot of old embroidery transfers I bought on Ebay: a few Vogart patterns, including the gay fruits that I really wanted to add to my little collection and quite some Aunt Martha patterns including a cute bunny one that I could not resist for obvious reasons. :D

On the right a somewhat tired version of Alice in Wonderland with lovely illustrations by Margaret W. Tarrant. Luckily the inside of the book looks better than it's cover. I have been bidding on Ebay on books illustrated by Margaret Tarrant for quite a while now but I usually stopped bidding at about a third of the price of the final bid. Sadly there are people who buy these books to take them apart and sell the illustrations separately on Ebay.

Anyway, I will host a small giveaway on this blog soon! It will contain some of the vintage embroidery patterns as there were a few 'doubles' in the lot I bought and I'll add some embroideryfloss as well.

Sunday stash # 4 Vintage Vogart Patterns

Can you call 10 patterns a 'stash'? Anyway these are most of my vintage embroidery patterns. I think the Hans and Gretel on top is my favourite! Most of them are in o.k. condition and more or less complete. I've used a vintage pattern, not pictured here it's a 'bee' pattern, a little while ago. It was already cut and it still transferred very well. I shall finish it soon, it's nearly done, and show it to you!