New fabrics from TungusTkan’
Eggplant is the new colour scheme for the Eva fabric. I reconstructed the design after having lost it when my computer fell in a coma.
The puppachutes and flying piggies from my video collaboration with Ilan were too good to not make into a fabric.
The pastoral piggy toile that I made for a weekly Spoonflower contest is now available for purchase.
This design in three different colours is based on Scythian petroglyphs of wild boars at the kurgan in Arzhan, Tuva, Russian Federation, dating from the 8th to 6th century B.C.
For an overview of all the TungusTkan’ fabrics so far, you can visit my Spoonflower profile or the Loot page.
Boar balloon shade!
Sara wrote to me and showed me the kick-ass balloon shade she has sewn for her lovely bathroom with my boar fabric:
It looks really nice. :o)
Это моя швейная машинка!
It’s a Soviet PMZ from 1960 (the manual was printed in 1960, anyway). I just got it off eBay for very little. Maybe because it’s not old enough to be antique and not at all uncommon – supposedly at this time there was an overproduction of sewing machines in the Soviet Union.
The PMZ factory in Podolsk was in tsarist times a Singer sewing machine factory. After the revolution in 1917 it was nationalized and became first Gosshveimashina (acronym for “National sewing machine works”), and then “Kalinin” Mechanical Works of Podolsk. The machines were naturally all based on the prerevolutionary Singer sewing machines, but probably with some improvements over time.
The early sewing machines are really beautiful. The 1960 model isn’t so bad either. :o)
All it needs is some dusting and maybe a little bit of oil. It has been in normal family use, and there is a nice little Russian children’s sticker on the case, and someone has carved “Лида” in tiny letters in the metal.
Thanks to the simple build and the well-written manual that came with it I could quickly figure it out and make the correct settings.
It works with a hand crank and can sew forward and backward. It sews quite fast (the manual states among some other important vital statistics that it can rotate up to 1,200 times per minute …).
I did some serious sewing with it today, and I must say the hand crank system helps avoid the neck pain I often get when I sew! I appreciate that it’s very quiet and has no influence on my electricity bill.
It has much less trouble with thicker fabrics and many layers of fabric than any electric machines I’ve used.
I miss having a zigzag a litle bit, but I’ll just have to make different types of seams for fabrics that unravel easily, use zigzag scissors and a second straight seam for sturdier fabrics, or just do that part by hand like my grandma.
My piggy toile fabric is in the weekly Spoonflower contest …
I don’t usually participate in these contests, but when the subject “Toile de Jouy” came up, a piggy toile just had to be made. And I knew it was all up to me.
You can cast your vote in the contest here.
There are lots of other very nice entries to the contest, and you can vote for as many as you like. Whee! There are no other piggy toiles in the contest, but there is a Cthulhu toile and a giant flying squirrell attack toile, as well as a couple of nice doggie toiles.
Boar pillows in Denver, CO
These photos were kindly sent to me by Lisa in Denver, Colorado in the Park Hill neigbourhood, who made a bunch of very nice pillows with my boar fabric. Lisa has a pretty cool living room:
It’s really fun to see the fabric in action! I myself haven’t made anything with it yet, because I don’t have a sewing machine. I’ve been saving it for when I’ll visit my mum over the holidays, because she has two sewing machines … ;o)
