Mr Tailor Man - The Finale!

Hey Guys!

In my blog hop post, I harked back to my series of Mr. Tailor Man posts. You know, the one's I never finished? For those of you who are having a little trouble remembering, there was a tailor in my town who was retiring, and I basically bought the bulk of his remaining stock and equipment off of him!

So, I thought maybe somebody out there would like to see the final few bits. Ironically, I've hardly touched most of it, so they are basically where I left them! But I though some of you guys might like to see!

So the first thing is some tailor's wax crayons, which are like tailor's chalk - but wax! They leave a slight mark and I think it irons out of most fabric.

The next thing I got was a bunch of silk thread for hand-stitching. You can pull a single stand out of the packets, and it's super strong so that your stitching won't break. Who doesn't hate that 'pop' sound? I picked up one of each of the colours he had.

Then there were some shoulder pads! Not sure if I'll ever get to use them, but more jackets have some sort of padding in the shoulders than I think I realised!

Then there were some anchor buttons (similar to what we saw in the JPG exhibition) and some braided cord. There was also what I think was seam binding but the picture came out a bit fuzzy!

Now these I loved (and I didn't really get these for very cheap!) - some vintage spools. I look forward to displaying these properly somewhere!

Then we have some dress shields. These can be stitched into the underarms of a dress, so as to protect the garment from any sweat/deodorant, etc. As most of us know, this can otherwise end up in a beloved piece of clothing being damaged or stained.

I got a bunch of random zip. Strangely they were mostly green!

Then I got a bunch of suit buttons. Some are really beautiful! And I have matching small and big ones for the green buttons which is nice.

Some things I got for free were remnant pieces. These are small pieces of lining. most of it doesn't appeal to me as its a bit polyester-y but the pink piece at the bottom is really lovely - I wish I had more than the smallish piece!

I also got a bunch of suiting scraps, all smallish pieces.

Then there was the bigger suiting pieces. It appears past Emmie was very productive and measured them all! They are full width and the top few pieces ranged from 44cm to 78cm in length.

Then we have the beautiful velvet remnants. I love stroking these. I have no idea what to do with them but I might make a patchwork cushion cover to stroke. I love the deep red and the grey especially.

Then there were some smaller wool remnant pieces.

This is where I keep the significant fabric lengths I got, a couple of which you have seen before(and I won't point out), but most you haven't. On the final day, when he was closing he told me I could have whatever was left in the fabric section for £50. Included in this was a bunch of stuff I didn't really want, but it was sort of an all or nothing deal! The only thing I knew was missing from the first time I came in was some Harris tweed, but it wasn't a colourway I was super fond of so thats ok!

There's more wool, wool blend, and suiting.

 The most "god knows what I'm going to do with this" piece of fabric is this 100% Silk Italian suiting. Not sure how much is there (most of the stuff is a max of about 3 yards), but it's apparently worth over £300 if I remember correctly.

Then there's this bumblebee fabric, which I think was used for butler uniforms? Some sort of uniform. Its actually quite a blue-navy and yellow up close. I think there's a couple of flaws, but he has noted the total length and unflawed length.

Then there were more wool blends.

And of course, where would you be without your own bolt of hair canvas? Everyone needs a bolt of hair canvas in their stash. Like, duh! I use this in, like, every project. All I hear every day is Mr.G saying, "God, I think you really need to think about stocking up on some more hair canvas".

I think the only thing I left behind that day was a bolt of nylon pocketing, which was ick to be honest. I actually left the hair canvas initially but then Lauren did her tailoring posts and I had to turn on my heel!

SO that's your lot. No more Tailor Man :(

But there's always more fabric :)

Emmie x

Mr Tailor Man Part.3 (..the saga continues..)

Hi guys!

In all my stressing last week over my Minerva make and organising a hen party (which went great by the way!) I forgot to say that I MIGHT have been to the tailor guy's shop again. MAYBE.

Ok, well, as I had said, I couldn't stop thinking about a wool blend in red that I had left behind, so I went back. 

Unfortunately, he also had the same wool blend in a beautiful purple too.

And then he pulled out this amazing 100% green wool that he was also selling. 

Needless to say, the sucker that I am, I walked out with all of it.

What I hadn't realised when I went back for the red, was the price tag. I knew it was £20 - but it had been reduced from £170!

So that was 2 of those.

And the green was reduced to £40 from £346!!

So £80 for £686 worth of fabric. Nuts. I felt horrendously guilty buying it off of him for such a low price, but that was the price that he had set. I have never tried to bargain with him, with the already low pricing, it wouldn't feel right.

How I'm ever going to cut into the fabrics, I don't know. I really wish I had never seen the 'before' price! And it has already been pre-shrunk, so no wool worries about that aspect.

The green wool was actually what they used to make officer's uniforms when they came back home from serving in the army. Tailor's used to have to buy in a specific wool from a specific supplier, and were paid to make the suits from scratch, but eventually they started to buy in standard sizes and tailor them to fit instead.

You can really see why it's so difficult to make a living from being a tailor sometimes.

He had also kept me some special buttons!

These are a couple of buttons made from Stag Horn. Pretty sweet, eh??

Kind of nutty when you think about it.

He ALSO gave me a discontinued suiting sample book, and I have started putting them together to make some patchwork cushions. I'm really happy with how the first one turned out.

And so I'm off again today, to see what treasures are in store.

He rang me last week to let me know that he had a few bags of scraps to give to me (I'm worried I have no more space!). I'm going to enjoy looking through it all and dreaming up what I could possible make out of them! He mentioned that there may even be enough velvet for something wearable!

Wish me treasures!

Emmie xx

Mr. Tailor Man... Part.2 !

Hi Guys,

So, I got up really early this morning (well, 8am) to get down to the tailors shop and see if he kept my extra goodies aside... I had meant to go last week, but with all the excitement of joining Rachel's sewing club, I forgot, and it was almost time for him to close.

Mr.G forced me to get up earlier than I wanted and head down. Thankfully he still remembered me, and had left the bits that we had discussed aside for me in the back.

So... these are the boxes I picked up. Can anyone guess what's inside? SewBrooke maybe?

Anyone??

Its a never-ending zip! 

I don't know about you guys, but my mind was kind of blown when I saw this! It completely makes sense, but it never occurred to me that this existed! 

Oh and there wasn't just one.

Because there were 5 boxes, but only 1 bag of runners for the zips, he didn't want to split them up. I was FORCED into buying them ALL! Oh well - MOAR ZIPS FOR ME! So I've got olive green, navy, beige, tan and grey I think? No black which was a bummer! Thankfully I want to get into lapped zips and move away from invisible. He also gave me a little lesson in how to thread the runner on :)

 I could literally cover everything I own in zips for the rest of my life and still have zip left over. 

There's like 200 yards a box. I own, like, a kilometre of zip.

Yes I just mixed imperial and metric for some unknown reason.

My next exciting purchase, another thing I've never seen before...

A jacket pressing board! Its so cool, and such a decent size and shape to drape a garment over.

And even cooler, it might be fancy in the front..

But there's a party in the back.

It has an extractor fan to draw the moisture out of the jacket when pressing it!!

 I assume this would be pretty necessary when you're using one of those crazy professional steam irons. Maybe I'll manage an upgrade someday!

I just think it looks shit cool.

I also bought a yard of thick blue fabric to cover the sleeve board from last time - it's the kind of stuff that he had covered his own board with. Now I've stroked it for a while I'm sort of tempted to go back and get one of the longer lengths to make a dress with.. Maybe the red. Argh, I have no control.

I also bought a piece of tweed that I was drooling over last time. It's not Harris, but its beautiful. It's Holland & Sherry, if that means anything to anyone? There was a piece of Harris but it wasn't very long, and I wasn't feeling the colourway. I stroked some other pieces of fabric but held back. Although I want to go back for that red now. Can't get it out of my head!!

I also picked up the remainder of this card of buttons with anchors on them (Mr.G made me). And he also managed to persuade me to give a home to one of his pairs of shears.

They look old and worn, but they are sharp!

He must be so happy I walked in off the street a few weeks ago.

I am!

LYLT,

Emmie xx