Fashion blogging (first and last time ever)
Ilan and I went to this fashion party (it was the fashion week in Berlin) where they had set up a photo session where all the guests could have photoz taken of their mad threadz combinationz skillz. The only reason we went was that Ilan’s friends Meneo were playing at the party. But the location itself – the Villa in Friedrichshain, a former brewery building, was pretty interesting too.
Photo by Iwo Gospodinow at fashionfreaks
After the shoot they tried to ask what brands I was wearing (they asked everybody about that). I said “No brands, all home made.” Here is the long answer that I did not give at that occasion …
Tinet – “Tatar swineherd at the local Kolkhoz”
Fur hat: dress uniform, Soviet government issue.
Wool jacket: home made by me.
Bathrobe: home made (?), inherited from my great-grandma Varma, 50’s or 60’s.
Skirt: home made by unknown person, found at thrift store.
Leg warmers: inherited from my mum.
Boots: vintage 80’s, any labels long since worn off.
Not visible: knitted bright red shorts made by mum, thrifted undershirt, panties from some Finnish department store I have forgotten the name of (vintage 90’s!!).
Okay, I guess I could have named H&M as a brand, because my wool-mix tights that are full of holes, two of my earrings and also my socks were bought there in the early 2000’s.
Ah, and I’m also wearing a cloth pad from Randumosity. Whee!
Severiina – “Rebellious youth”
Kheffiyeh: unknown make.
Spiked collar: thrifted, with a ribbon from a Sachertorte box and a metal chain found in the street.
Ilan’s outfit was even better, like he’d come straight out of a Moebius comic, and our Spanish friends were certainly some of the best dressed people at the party, just a bit more understated.
Severiina had a ball – she really enjoyed Meneo’s concert, and she was even invited to dance on the stage with those two wild Spanish boys!
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.
Apparently Eva is best of Sweden 2009? (One of them.)
I was reading Åsa Ekström’s blog (hoping in vain to read something about the fabric designs she has made for Ikea[!]), and there she mentioned that her book Sayonara September was included in Paul Gravett’s “PG Tips No. 27: The Best Of 2009 Part 1: An International Perspective“. Was I ever suprised when I came to the very bottom of the page.
Well, apparently it fits a trend that Fredrik Strömberg (who made the selection) had observed. (Oh noes, I have been categorized! Maybe I should change my sex?)
Also, Dagens Nyheter, one of the biggest Swedish newspapers (in fact the only Swedish paper I read on a regular basis, because it has the Rocky comic), recently published a review of the Eva book. My publisher Horst said that I have now officially kicked Daniel Clowes’ ass, because not only has Eva sold a fair lot of more copies than A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron that Epix published recently, but also DN never wrote anything about his books, not even Ghost World. (But of course it would probably be quite different if Clowes was Swedish …)
