Carved wooden fan (restoration)

Another one that I got cheap at a flea market. Dark wood, all parts complete and unbroken safe for the damaged silk ribbon which I replaced. As good as new with an effort of just one hour. Before adding the new ribbon I oiled the fan with scented oil that made the wood evenly dark and gave it a lovely scent. I usually use massage oil for this. You can also use common leather wax but the smell is less pleasant. Linseed oil also works nicely, in fact anything that is good for plain wood and doesn't have too much of a smell to it.

Fan with torn ribbon

Cleaned and oiled

Button necklace

I've long had in mind making one of these but shied the trouble of collecting so many different buttons in matching size. Enter "creative button sets"! Having bought one package of each available colour, all I had to do was pick the smaller buttons, check that all colours were evenly represented, and start threading them on invisible nylon thread. I worked with two threads simultaneously - you have the choice of stringing all buttons on one thread and get them irrevocably tangled somewhere half through the project, or work with two threads that just tangle a bit but all the buttons stay in line.

As suspected, I still have plenty of buttons left. Off to more experiments for tailor's jewellery!

Two-string-pouch

Scrap leather and too much procrastination...

Cut two of the desired shape with appr. 3 mm seam allowance. Sew, but leafe about 1 cm open at the top. You can decorate the top by cutting it nicely. For marking leather, don't use a biro, you won't get the ink off ever. Use pencil, coloured pencil or chalk.

 For sewing leather (yes, it's a different pouch; I did several in a row) you best use clips to hold the pieces together.

Punch holes for the drawstrings at the hight where you ended the seam. Remember to make it an even number if you want to have the strings go around nicely.

Turn and "quickly" braid a string in the matching colour because you just can't find any ready-made in your stash but want to finish the project...

Money pouch

This style of a money pouch was widespread at the beginning of the 19th century, be it made from leather, knitted, or crocheted, with or without embroidery, the owner's initials, or loving messages.

This version is the absolute basic, to be whipped through the machine if you discover you're off to an event yet still lack a pouch for your coins. And yes, it's really only suitable for coins.

The pattern for the leather version is simple and looks disconcertingly a bit like a panty liner unless you plan to make the pouch-ends a little more square.

Cut two, and make sure that the biggest coin you intend to store still fits through the narrow centre part. Cut a slit in the centre, lengthwise, also big enough to conveniently slip bigger coins in and out.

Sew along the edge with appr. 3 mm seam allowance. A strong needle in an average sewing machine is good enough for thin to medium leather. Turn and use. To carry it, you best tuck it into your belt so it hangs there conveniently and is really hard to lose, to my experience.

You can decorate the leather (before sewing) or add two metal rings to put in the centre as stoppers, but they're more of a decoration as absolutely nothing can slip out as long as the pouch hangs over your belt.

Ivory fan (restoration)

 
Another find from the flea market - a finely carved fan from what seems to be ivory, dating from I'd say at least around 1900 (and hence old enough to buy it with good conscience). The only thing that was broken is the clasp on the handle that would have held a decorative tassel or ribbon adornment and, being from tha same material as the fan, was broken with only half of it remaining. It will be substituted by a metal one as soon as I figure out where to get high quality fan supplies. What I could repair was the missing silk ribbon that would hold the leaves together. As I am in the process of beginning a silk-ribbon embroidered dress I happened to have silk ribbon at home, and after deciding which colour of ribbon would fit the ivory best I set out to buy twenty bottles of silk dye in all shades of the rainbow and dyed the piece a nice midnight blue. The rest to come for the dress... If you dye silk ribbon, you can either paint it, or dip it. If you want it perfectly saturated, either dip it, or go over it with a brush several times until every fibre has taken in the colour. I opt for dipping and hanging the ribbon to dry on a paperclip. Neat and tidy. Don't forget to iron it thoroughly, according to the instuctions of the dyes you're using.

If you repair the binding of a fan make sure to start right and work your way from the upper side of the fan downwards from behind to front, or from left working upwards, or else you'll never be able to close the fan properly or casually whisk it open with a flick of your hand - trust me, I learned it the hard way ;) The ends of the ribbon are secured with clear super glue. Bone glue would have been proper, but I'm certainly not starting to cook out bones in my kitchen...

Artificial glass grapes

As it's nigh to impossible to get artificial grapes made from glass or even acrylic, I decided to attempt making them myself. Luckily my favoured bead shop had purple glass beads on sale, in four different sizes, of which I bought a couple, and some green wire for the stems. I spent the evening creating a thoroughly acceptable bunch of grapes, did some calculation and rushed back to the shop the next day to buy the rest of the beads.

First you start by cutting pieces of wire, the first attempt was from fourteen inches growing one centimetre shorter each row, but this makes for a very bulky stem. In the second attempt I started with eleven centimetres for all of the grapes, which did not change much except that the stem is shorter and less bulky, but only towards the end...

So, cut your wire in regular pieces of your choice, then use a pair of fine pliers to bend one end and press it flat. You want the bead to get stuck at this thicker end without the wire-end showing (and without the bead cracking because of the wire-end being too thick), so it's a question of intuition and gentle manipulation. If it doesn't work at all, you can also add a drop of jewellery glue to the end before moving the bead over it to secure it.

Bend approximately 2-3 mm for the smaller beads, increasing for the larger ones.

Then arrange the stems and twist the wire to make up a stem. Start with five small ones, one as the bottom centre, joined by the other four as the first circle of grapes. Keep adding grapes in increasing sizes to make up a complete bunch.

I never cared much about what to do with the stem, as they're intended as decoration on my next baroque dress and the stems will be covered by foliage and ribbons anyway.

Yet another renovated box...

Yes, I admit, I have plenty of them, in all states of want of repair ;) The current aim is to get all the half-finished projects off the desk, so here's yet another finished piece.

Material is wood (in good state) covered in I think embossed cardboard (only partly in good state). The inside is lined either in embossed silk or high quality artificial silk which was to a great part in a very poor condition, torn and detached from the sides. Due to the fact that the inside of the lid was in perfect condition and it might be silk after all, I decided to leave it, give it a very good clean and repair what can be repaired; which mainly meant re-glueing the fabric to the sides (a line of book-glue along the top) and adding gold-coloured trim to distract from the fact that in some parts the silk is irreparably damaged.

I forgot to take pictures of the "before"-state, so here's just a glimpse of the process and a few hints for details.

I hardly ever use hot glue for repair works, due to a couple of facts: hot glue is not removable, it's never periodically correct, always visible in some way and it adds volume. Book glue is flexible, becomes almost invisible when dry and is actually removable with a little effort. The tricky thing was to hide the ends of the trim, the absolute perfection being that it takes a second or even third gaze to figure where the trim begins and ends. With cord and book glue it's easy: apply a small dollop of glue to the end and work it in gently with your fingertips until it starts turning transparent and dry. Now you can shape the tip to paintbrush-shape which vanishes nicely behind the similarly shaped beginning.

And you end up with a very neat interior.

The exterior involved still more glueing and pressing because the cardboard covers had turned stiff over time, and especially the corners were beginning to turn up. The whole thing seemed so dry to me that I rubbed transparent shoe wax (the real thing) onto the repaired plates and they turned out like new (except for the missing parts that need to be replaced).