Linen - in real life

 I got my new ‘interim’ glasses last week, and it’s been such a pleasure to be able to see clearly for close-up work. Also pleasant is clearing up a project from pre-operation days — Zalia top by Style Arc.

It was cut out, interfaced and partially sewn previously, but I hadn’t managed to serge around the sleeves. I knew I wanted to see well for going around the exaggerated curves and the linen really need the edge finishing before any further sewing. So, it waited.

You’ll notice it looks unpressed in the photo. While I carefully pressed all seams during construction, I’m showing it as it looks straight from the washer and hung up to air dry. Mostly because that is the way it will be worn. I love the look of crisply ironed linen, but that only lasts about 10 seconds (on me anyway) and I’m trying to accustom myself to the look of rumpled linen. We’ll see how that goes —

I love the color, and love the sleeves so I’m hopeful !

Ye Olde Curiousity

 

I always like to look for vintage sewing items whenever we come across vintage/antique/junk stores in our travels.

The pictured box and its contents are totally unrelated, but piqued my curiousity and I found I just couldn’t leave them.

The box must have originally contained some type of threads — I suspect embroidery, rather than sewing — due to the Handbeitsgarne (handcraft yarn) printed inside the lid. As far as I can tell, the company was located in Saxony, from the mid-1920s until ?. 

Inside the box are a lot (!) of embroidered tapes — most are two initials, a few are single initials.

A Google image search identifies them (for the most part) as French laundry labels. No idea if this is accurate, and no idea how they came to be in a German thread box — but it’s fun to speculate.

I keep thinking that one day I’ll have a flash of inspiration and find some creative use for them, but so far they’ve only been used as labels to mark the back of various slacks. They seem too narrow to easily be sewn together to make yardage and while they could work as trim, the red thread doesn’t always work with the colors I tend to sew. Oh well — Don’t hesitate to share a comment if you have a clever idea!