vincentbriggs

[vincentbriggs]

Finished my purple shirt today. I'd had the linen in my stash for at least 10 years, so it's nice to have finally sewed it up. It was a salmon-y reddish pink when I originally bought it (on sale for very cheap at fabricville) and I dyed it purple not long after that.

It's the same cut and construction as usual, which is covered in my machine sewn shirt tutorial. Haven't worn it yet but I'll get some pictures of it on me soon.

[vincentbriggs]

The main apron I made in my apron video is this brown & ivory cotton one. I stencilled on gold leaves with a bit of brown shading, and bright blue berries & flower petals.

It's made to button over a waistcoat but I later found out it also works on my night gowns. And it can also be worn with the top folded down, like in the last photo.

[vincentbriggs]

#I still don't quite know what my aesthetic is called #but it's whatever this gentleman is cooking

Your aesthetic is pasta salad?

The first apron I made in my apron video was just a test version, so it mostly didn't get filmed, but the pattern turned out so well that it's very similar to the main one I made. The only change I made before starting the second one was cutting the flower petal part of the stencil a bit bigger.

The teal cotton is from a thrifted bedsheet and the white cotton is from a table cloth. (It's actually a white on white floral print, but it doesn't show up well.)

[vincentbriggs]

The first apron I made in my apron video was just a test version, so it mostly didn't get filmed, but the pattern turned out so well that it's very similar to the main one I made. The only change I made before starting the second one was cutting the flower petal part of the stencil a bit bigger.

The teal cotton is from a thrifted bedsheet and the white cotton is from a table cloth. (It's actually a white on white floral print, but it doesn't show up well.)

[vincentbriggs]

New video! It's 47 minutes and I make some fancy aprons.

My main inspiration was this lovely illustration from a 1916 book.

Plus that style of 18th-19th c. workman's apron that buttons onto the waistcoat.

Source (1725-26), source (1807).

[vincentbriggs]

New video! It's 47 minutes and I make some fancy aprons.

My main inspiration was this lovely illustration from a 1916 book.

Plus that style of 18th-19th c. workman's apron that buttons onto the waistcoat.

Source (1725-26), source (1807).

[vincentbriggs]

It's aprons :)

An attempt at self promotion, a wretched task I hate.

Patreon link.

[vincentbriggs]

An attempt at self promotion, a wretched task I hate.

Patreon link.

Edit: Video finished now!

[vincentbriggs]

Started a purple linen shirt a while ago but the sewing room has been so so so hot, what with its thin walls and upstairs-ness and large South facing windows, so I've mostly been working on other tasks in less hot rooms. But today it's somewhat bearable in there so I've got the collar on at least.

[vincentbriggs]

Accidentally hit my tripod with the table while starting to film the intro for the video I'm working on.

[vincentbriggs]

hey i just wanted to say the things youve made are so beautiful and nice especially the leaf bolero that was so creative and going through the effort to embroider details was amazing!

also i wanted to compliment your sewing machines because from what i see they run so smoothly, and look so nice. Do you ever plan on trying to touch up the decals? i think i have seen some way to do it but also it seemed really difficult to do. Also if you had the ability to get any model of sewing machine you wanted, what would you pick?

Hello! Thank you! (And oh my, it's been far too long since I've answered any asks, sorry to everyone who still has one waiting in the inbox. I immediately forget what's in here as soon as I close the tab.)

The decals? I assume you mean the ones on my White, because the paint job on my Singer 15-91 is in great shape.

Just a wee bit of wear on some of the ones along the front edge.

My White VS2, on the other hand, is 140 years old and has been used continually for at least 60 of those years and probably closer to 90, so the finish is not so spiffy. (Idk who the first owner was but Viola Bell, a relative of the guy who gave it to me, made a living sewing on it from about the 1910's to the 1970's, and I assume whoever first bought it in the mid 1880's used it too.)

Some of the decals are mostly visible, but a lot of them are missing large chunks, and the one on the flat bed of the machine is all but completely gone.

And I haven't been able to find any pictures of another machine with this decal pattern! I have no way to find out what that central motif looked like!

A lot of the other parts are intact enough to be more or less figured out, but I could never get the whole design, unless someone else posts pictures of the same machine in better condition.

In any case, I have no intention of trying to hand paint all of that back on, and I don't know if it's possible to get custom decals but it sounds expensive.

If I ever do anything to the finish it'd be adding a new coat of lacquer, since a lot of it has worn off the paint. I'd first try to remove all the remaining bits of old lacquer from the plain areas, which shouldn't be too hard I think? I'd have to look into it first, and I don't have any lacquer, but I may possibly do that someday.

But it's fine how it is, and there are a lot of other things I need to fix that are much higher priorities! Still need to fix the snagging in the bobbin area, and re-align my serger, and un-gunk that one really stubborn difficult-to-take-apart area in my Pfaff, and there may even be a couple more machines in need of even more work that I haven't posted about at all yet.

~

If I could have any machine I wanted? Ooh, hrm, gosh there are a lot of cool machines out there. In terms of pure aesthetics there are so many gorgeous ones to look at, but for functionality I prefer working on industrial machines. (No offence to vintage domestics, they're great and hard-wearing and fabulous to work on!! But they don't have the VROOM of a big industrial in a big and very heavy table.) I've used modern industrial machines at college and at my current and previous tailoring jobs, and I love how solid and sturdy and fast they are, and I especially love the knee lever that raises the presser foot. I've never used an antique or vintage industrial machine before, alas, but I imagine they're probably very nice too.

Unfortunately the industrials I've worked on have all been hideous pebbled greige, so my dream machine for basic sewing would be the inner workings of an industrial machine but very heavily modified to be pretty like the really old domestic ones. Nice hardwood table top instead of laminated particle board, elegant swirly table base instead of pressed metal beams, all possible plastic pieces replaced with metal or other material, lots of green and brass and art nouveau... But alas, I am poor, and making such extensive modifications happen would cost a ridiculous amount of money and I don't even have the space for a normal real industrial.

And those industrials are just straight stitch machines, so I'd still need to have a different vintage machine for when I want to do machine buttonholes. My Singer has a buttonhole attachment, but I've never had a machine that can do zig zag (though I will once my Pfaff 360 is fully unstuck). So as long as I'm daydreaming about extensive sewing machine modifications maybe a solid metal machine from the 60's or 70's with cams that can do different stitches, but also made more fancy and historical looking. Maybe it could be shaped like a dragon and the needle bar & presser foot could come out of the open mouth.

[vincentbriggs]

Hello! I was watching your newest waistcoat video and was struck by how well-behaved your thread seems to be. I recently did some handsewing and my thread was endlessly twisting, knotting on itself, etc. Are you using a specific kind of thread when handsewing? All tips appreciated as I'm an utter beginner! Thank you!

Hello! In that video I used silk thread, cotton thread, and linen thread, and I waxed all of them. I also used heavy polyester for sewing on the buttons, but I don't like to use it for actual seams, as it tends to twist a lot and the wax usually kind of balls up into little grains onto the surface rather than sticking smoothly to the fibres. For more tips, The Dreamstress has a nice post of hand sewing advice!

~ Huh why did I save this as a draft and forget about it for over a month? Oops.

[vincentbriggs]

Made another nightgown. Not much to say about it, it's the same as all the others - a cotton sateen bedsheet for the fabric and mostly the same construction as my shirt tutorial.

I used fine cotton thread and it was good on the regular seams but skipped a lot of stitches on the really thick areas of gathering, and on the buttonholes, so I had to go back and redo some bits. If the buttonholes don't hold up well I'll go back and hand sew over them.

The buttons are plastic ones from my stash. I considered using mother of pearl but I worry about putting them through the washing machine.

[vincentbriggs]

OH I've had a thought!!!

The thing that holds the shuttle has these little pads, if pads is the right word for something so hard, and I'm pretty sure they're made of animal horn. Here's a picture from when I was cleaning it.

I'd noticed that it has a rough fibrous sort of texture along the edge there, which is what made me figure it's made of horn.

Maybe the thread is occasionally getting snagged by that rough bit!!

So if I take it out and try and shave off the rough bit, maybe it will work!

Hi hello I have a question for Vibrating Shuttle People.

My c. 1885 White VS 2 is mostly in working order, and I thought it was working 100% fine but when I tried to actually sew on it I found it makes loops occasionally.

They're always on the underside of the fabric and are quite long - about 6 or 7 mm. All the rest of the stitching is nice and even. They sometimes happen an inch or two apart, but sometimes it goes for a really long time without doing it.

I've tried a few different kinds of thread and it does it a lot more with poly thread than with cotton, but it still does it with my fine cotton machine quilting thread, so I don't think that's the whole problem. (Plus the previous user sewed on this machine from the 1910's all the way through to the 1970's, and the tins of thread it came with included some really low quality fuzzy synthetics, and as far as I know she didn't have another machine so they presumably worked with it?)

I thought maybe it was the slightly different length of the newer needles I bought, but it still does the loops when I use it with one of the original White brand needles it came with.

I've fiddled with the tension lots and lots, and it's super easy to adjust on this machine, but that doesn't appear to have anything to do with the loops either. As mentioned the rest of the stitching is perfectly fine. I've tried it with big heavy spools and tiny lightweight spools and in between spools, and loops happen with all of them.

I am at a loss! The only thing I can think of is maaybe when I took it apart for cleaning I put something back not quite aligned right, BUT if it were the alignment then why would the thread quality affect it so much?? When I cleaned it I also replaced all the felt pads, including the one between the machine and the tension discs (which are different from newer kinds because they spin) but the discs are spinning just fine as far as I can tell.

Has this ever happened to you? Any clues??

It's a boat shuttle, if that makes any difference.

[vincentbriggs]

Hi hello I have a question for Vibrating Shuttle People.

My c. 1885 White VS 2 is mostly in working order, and I thought it was working 100% fine but when I tried to actually sew on it I found it makes loops occasionally.

They're always on the underside of the fabric and are quite long - about 6 or 7 mm. All the rest of the stitching is nice and even. They sometimes happen an inch or two apart, but sometimes it goes for a really long time without doing it.

I've tried a few different kinds of thread and it does it a lot more with poly thread than with cotton, but it still does it with my fine cotton machine quilting thread, so I don't think that's the whole problem. (Plus the previous user sewed on this machine from the 1910's all the way through to the 1970's, and the tins of thread it came with included some really low quality fuzzy synthetics, and as far as I know she didn't have another machine so they presumably worked with it?)

I thought maybe it was the slightly different length of the newer needles I bought, but it still does the loops when I use it with one of the original White brand needles it came with.

I've fiddled with the tension lots and lots, and it's super easy to adjust on this machine, but that doesn't appear to have anything to do with the loops either. As mentioned the rest of the stitching is perfectly fine. I've tried it with big heavy spools and tiny lightweight spools and in between spools, and loops happen with all of them.

I am at a loss! The only thing I can think of is maaybe when I took it apart for cleaning I put something back not quite aligned right, BUT if it were the alignment then why would the thread quality affect it so much?? When I cleaned it I also replaced all the felt pads, including the one between the machine and the tension discs (which are different from newer kinds because they spin) but the discs are spinning just fine as far as I can tell.

Has this ever happened to you? Any clues??

It's a boat shuttle, if that makes any difference.

[vincentbriggs]

Another thing that had been on The Pile for a long time was this space waistcoat! I dye painted this piece of cotton back in 2015 when we were doing silk painting in Textiles class. I think I started cutting the waistcoat about 2 years ago, covered the buttons, and then got distracted. I had to piece part of one shoulder because I'd already used up part of the fabric to make a couple of handkerchiefs, but I don't think it's too noticeable. After dyeing the cotton I had splattered some fabric ink on it and painted a few stars, but after lining the fronts recently I painted a lot more stars on, and then painted glow in the dark ink on top.

It was a bit tricky to get photos of the glowing, and the first two are brighter than it looks in real life, at least with the small amount of charging it had when I took them. I also did a running stitch around the edges with glow in the dark thread which I've had for at least a decade and never used! Then I accidentally melted part of it with my iron and had to redo that bit.

The lining is a thrifted cotton sateen bedsheet and the back is blue linen from I forget where. The buttonholes are done by machine first, same as the last one, and then covered in silk twist.

[vincentbriggs]

Finally got some pictures of the space waistcoat on me! Here it is with the teal shirt I made for my shirt tutorial last year, and pants made from the same navy blue linen as the waistcoat back. And then with a white shirt and the blue silk breeches I made a few years ago. Despite having a lot of waistcoats with this late 1770's-early 80's cut, I have no coats with the sort of cut that goes with it.