This is the one I’d be:
Peter, of Male Pattern Boldness, has offered a challenge to his readers. Answer one of three questions, and be considered to win a set of Glamour Girl paper dolls. I don’t normally do these things, but I was so prepared for this one. You’ll have to check out Peter’s blog to see why. (Check the comments on this post, if you’re curious.)
Note: Edits added 1/24/2012, added in italics, and bold, below.
There’s been precious little sewing, and even less sewing blogging, around here lately. There’s always a long list of things that need doing, not many of which require needle and thread. Here’s one of them; I decided to post it because I think that anyone who can sew can probably handle this particular bit of home repair. It was actually kind of fun, and I loved not paying a plumber a hundred bucks or more to install it. Here’s our old kitchen faucet, dating (I think) from around 1970:
It’s ugly, it’s never been maximally useful, and it developed a loathsome drip. We’ve always hated having a faucet that was so low — almost on level with the top of the sink — since it’s difficult to get deep pans under it. I decided I’d rather replace it than deal with taking it apart just to fix the leak.
So I trotted over to Lowe’s and found a new one. As it turned out, there weren’t many options for us; at all of the hardware stores in our area, there were only two faucets that would work in our particular situation. (I’ll explain that later.) Most people won’t have that much trouble finding a replacement. Figuring out which one to buy isn’t usually a problem either; in general, sinks have standardized holes in the stainless or porcelain. You just need to know the number of holes, and the configuration.
I found a faucet assembly that would work, got the tool kit out of the basement, cleared out the cabinet, and reached in to turn the water off. And couldn’t. The valve handles wouldn’t budge. Stymied at the first moment! The first step for this home repair project, much to my surprise, involved these tools:
WD-40 is my best friend. When using it, tap gently, or you’ll end up calling the plumber after all. It took only a couple of minutes’ work before I was able to turn the handles. With the water lines closed off, I crawled into the cabinet and peered under the sink:
Ours is a four-hole sink, but the 1970s faucet uses only two (you can see the water lines above, one hot, one cold, which go to the appropriate faucet handle). The fourth hole, on the far right, holds a brass plug in place over the hole where a sprayer would go. Yeah, that sink needs replacing, too, along with the 1952 counter, but that’s a project for another time.
I reached up and unscrewed the rather weird little rods holding the faucet in place. There was nothing else keeping the faucet assembly steady, so I went slowly, making sure that I could ensure that the assembly would end up resting on its side, instead of falling into my porcelain sink and chipping it. If your sink is in better shape than mine, you might want to hedge your bet a little and line it with a towel against damage.
Under the faucet was horrifying:
Blech! Getting rid of this, alone, would have been a good reason to replace the old faucet. Weirdly, all of these deposits and the grime scrubbed off very nicely — without even much effort. I used a non-metal scrubber, cleanser, and polished like mad. It was beautiful when I finished, which apparently amazed me so much that I forgot to take a picture.
Once the surface was clean, I placed the new faucet assembly into the holes. (I debated scrubbing off the rust underneath, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. There’s a stainless steel sink in our future.) Here’s what the assembly looked like from the underside:
The new faucet is just set in place here. The gray water hose on the left isn’t connected; it’s just sitting there. See the threaded steel post on the right, just above the whitish connectors? There’s another one on the left, though you can’t see it as well. Those posts are what holds the faucet in place. This is possibly the kludg-iest connecting system imaginable, but it’s also exactly the one that held the 1970s assembly in place, so apparently it’s got tradition going for it.
Here are the parts that get attached to those posts:
The little round tube is a spacer. You twirl the rectangular bits onto the posts until they are braced against the bottom of the sink. Wacky, no? It does seem to work, although it looks pretty dicey:
You can see the rectangular bit, the tube, and the nut that holds them in place.
Edited 1/24/2012: I found that the toggles that go across the holes underneath the sink tended to slip, so I picked up a couple of large washers and threaded them onto the bolts before replacing the toggles. Now, under the sink, there’s a washer up against the underside of the hole; then the rectangular bit (the “toggle”); the tube, and finally, the nut that holds it all in place. The washers provide a more stable resting place for the toggles than just having the open hole, and prevents any slippage that might occur as the faucet handles are turned again and again over time. You want to be careful when tightening a porcelain-finished sink; the washer gives you a little more leeway for keeping things snug, without risking cracking the porcelain finish.
Once the faucet assembly is centered and firm, you re-connect the waterlines to the new assembly:
Because it uses a lever instead of two handles, the new faucet doesn’t use the right and left holes for the water lines; instead, all of the connectors go through the large, center hole that the 1970s faucet didn’t use at all. The two gray vinyl tubes are the hot and cold water lines, and the patterned hose goes to the new sprayer, which replaced the messy cap that originally covered the fourth hole in our sink. I checked the connections very, very carefully, and that was it.
The whole installation took less than an hour. Here’s the new faucet:
Well, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. Because we have a portable dishwasher, our faucet has to have an adapter on the end of the spigot; it was this that severely limited our choice of hardware. It seems that modern faucets usually have some kind of fluted end, many with sprayers built into the spout, and we can’t hook our dishwasher onto any of those. It may be 1952 in our kitchen, but the dishwasher is a critical part of our 2010 life, so fancy faucet tips were out of the question.
Our new faucet doesn’t look quite as nice (or maybe just doesn’t look quite as finished) with the dishwasher adapter on the end:
But it stands a lot taller than the old one, swings out of the way much more effectively, and, although we don’t use it, it’s a lot nicer to have a sprayer installed in the fourth hole than an ill-fitting blank. (By the way, I did have to uncoil the sprayer hose under the sink and let it sit for a day before it un-kinked enough to allow us to lift the sprayer head.)
Because we realize that we’re likely to sell our house someday, I put the correct head into a plastic bag, labeled it, and taped it to the pipes under the sink. That’s so that we will have it handy when the real estate agent explains that we’d better get the house in shape to sell it.
Related: Sinking, Not Sewing
When Mr. Noile and I started eating hot pot for dinner, we realized that it would be a great idea to have something larger than a trivet to put underneath our cast iron kettle when it is on the table. The solution turned out to be more versatile than we expected:
I found 12in by 12in sheets of ceramic (technically, these may be glass) tiles at a local hardware store, and cemented them to a thin layer of cork.
Here’s what one of those squares looks like:
I made four, so that we could use them in various configurations. Here’s our table with the tiles arranged by twos:
Four in a row, down the center of the table, they look like one continuous set of tiles:
Using just three, with spaces between, looks completely different (yeah, it also looks different because my photographic skills need help; working on that):
One advantage to these mats is that they store very easily, as they’re quite thin. We tend to keep two on the table, and two more on a coffee table in the dining room, which gives us a place to put cups or snacks if we’re sitting there.
Finding very thin cork for the backing was a little tricky; an office supply store had thin cork, but only in pieces too small for these tiles. I found a roll at a local office/art supply place, and used an Olfa cutter and a steel ruler to cut it to size.
I tried several different adhesives before I found the right one; you’ll probably have to experiment, as what you’ll need will depend on your particular tiles, and the backing on which they’re sitting.
Attaching the tiles to the cork required some dexterity, since there are small spaces between each tile. I had to put a drop of adhesive on the back of each tile; I managed this by doing the first row, and then applying adhesive and rolling the tiles onto the cork row by row. I put weights (stacks of heavy cook books) on the tiles until the adhesive had set — in this case, overnight.
This is my wear-around-the-house-so-the-bad-kitten-can-destroy-it sweater. Or jacket, I’m not sure which. It’s very comfortable, and it was remaindered for next to nothing, so I was happy to find it. But the asymmetric front closure just looks strange. Believe me, it looks really odd on a real body. Or, at least, on my real body:
A little trim balanced it much better:
Or did it? Mr. Noile says this jacket is still seriously wonky. Aldebaran, the kitten, likes it just fine. And it does appear to be virtually indestructible, which is what matters when the little monster feels like mountain climbing.
Dear JoAnn –
Well, you’ve finally done it. After years of trying to run me out of your “Fabrics and Crafts” store — years while you added more and more junky craft stuff, cheaper and cheaper crummy fabric, and tons and tons of stuff that has nothing whatever to do with either fabrics or crafts — you’ve succeeded.
Sure, I’ll run in for thread, and a zipper if I’m desperate. But for a long time after I’d given up on most of what you stock, when I had a bit of spare time, I’d spend it at the pattern table. I’d take a half an hour or so to look at patterns and plan projects. It was relaxing and refreshing. The best kind of “down” time.
No more. My nearest JoAnn Fabric and Craft store has installed some kind of 24/7 video that looms over the pattern section, screeching out — well, I don’t know what, because if I’m at that pattern table, thinking and planning are what I want to do. What I don’t want is to be assaulted by noise.
Even the video has to compete with the too-loud, ever-present, radio and with the store announcements that attempt to get attention over everything else.
Yeah, JoAnn, the only thing I’ve done in the past year in your store is have a little quiet adult time. Sure, the end result was that I’d buy things that I hadn’t planned to buy. That should look like a big plus to you. Buying more stuff than you meant to is what people do when they get excited and interested in what they’re doing. You take more money out of my pocket when I like being in your store; works every time!
But I’m not getting excited about anything at JoAnn anymore. Because, guess what? I can look at patterns at home. Where it’s quite and pleasant, and no one’s trying to sell me stuff I don’t want in an unending, looping, loud interminable advertisement that I can’t escape.
So, JoAnn, this is it. Good-bye, baby. It’s been a long, slow process, but you finally chased me completely out of your store. Hope that was your plan all along. If that’s the case, it’s win-win for both of us.
Noile
PS — Does ANYONE watch those videos? I’ve never yet seen anyone stop to look at them. But I have seen a lot of people shooting dirty looks at them.
Mr. Noile was kind enough to take these pictures of Vogue 8499. This skirt has wonderful, deep side pockets, which can be very useful if you’re bringing bread home from the market:
Well, OK, I don’t really shop like this. But it’s not a bad way of illustrating just how deep those pocket are, is it?
I added hidden, shallow pockets to this skirt when I made it, so I got the best of both worlds (details in the second link below).
Related: Vogue 8499 Marcy Tilton Skirt ; Vogue 8499 The Skirt, in Black
Been cursing the dreadful quality of thread these days? Me, too — at least until I discovered Emma’s new avocation:
She’s chewing happily on the thread running along the back of my machine. She doesn’t eat it, or even chew through it. She just gnaws on it. This went a long way toward explaining the strange weakness I was periodically encountering as I stitched merrily along. Needless to say, I now deploy the sewing machine cover with far greater frequency than I used to.
(Yes, Emma is a GIANT cat — she’s part Maine Coon, and that’s the part that shows. See those huge paws? Very clever, those paws. Very useful for water play in the bathroom, too. Very useful for string — or thread — play anywhere.)
This post is actually an old one. A recent comment from a reader reminded me that I had left a bunch of stuff dangling. (Life does interfere with blogging now and then.) There are quite a few posts in my drafts folder that never saw the light of day. I’ll be going back and posting them as I get the chance. In the meantime, here’s the follow up on my poor, broken Pfaff. This one’s from July, 2008:
Mr. Noile and I have been traveling, theoretically on vacation. While Mr. Noile has been spending his time doing academic research, I’ve been having various sewing adventures, most, if not all, of which will be revealed in time. The best one, though, came about as the result of an accidental phone call when I was looking for a replacement check spring for my Pfaff 1229. My machine and I ended up at Smith-Owen in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The technician I spoke to wasn’t satisfied just to give me what I said I wanted. Instead, he asked me to tell him exactly what was going on with my machine. I mentioned that our travels would take us to northern Michigan, and he suggested that I drop the machine off — saying that he was pretty sure that he could have it fixed by the time we left the state.
So, on the way to Traverse City from Ann Arbor, we detoured to Grand Rapids and left my well-loved machine with Brian. He called us in northern Michigan days — that’s right DAYS! — later to report that all was well, and that I could pick it up.
I’d left samples of my stitching disasters with him, along with a piece of the most troublesome fabric. He returned a swatch with perfect stitching on it, along with another test piece that demonstrated that all was well with my baby once again. And my self-diagnosis? Not quite right — somehow the throw of the zig zag wasn’t quite traveling the way it should, and that was the source of the problem.
No more — my wonderful 1229 is purring along as if it were brand new. The bill? Just under $80 for a new life and a tune-up. I was so thrilled and relieved that I bought every single accessory foot Smith-Owen sold for my machine. (More on that later.) And two copies of a wonderful, inspiration reference/tutorial (ditto).
Mr. Noile and I found this cape in an antique shop this summer. It fit perfectly, so how could we resist it? It needs a bit of pressing, but here it is on my dummy:
Based on its construction, and the other coats available in the shop from the same source, I’m tentatively dating it from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. It might be earlier, and I suppose there’s a slim chance it’s a bit later, but this feels right. It was made by the Hospital Clothing Co. of Philadelphia (though we found it in Northern Michigan). Here’s the label (woven!):
The design is absolutely classic. It’s all wool, as the label says, black on the outside, and fully lined in blue wool flannel. The blue lining is a little unusual; nurse’s capes were more commonly lined in red. There’s a beautifully made watch pocket inside the left opening:
A nurse, of course, always carried a watch to use when checking a pulse. A small brass button is missing just under the pocket; it secures an internal tab to help keep the cape closed. You can see the thread that was left behind when the button was lost.
A large, sturdy hook-and-eye closes the neck at the collar. These bits weren’t applied after the garment was made, but are sewn into the collar seams. Here’s the “eye” — it’s really a loop — part::
Isn’t the collar piping beautiful?
All but one of the buttons is original. The buttons are metal and a very bright brass color. The design has a shield with a crown in the middle, with two horses rampant on either side, and an eagle above::
Four large buttons close the front, two smaller ones hold the tab at the neck, and there is another tab inside the cape, toward the hem, that is also closed with another set of the smaller buttons. If you look closely at the first picture, you’ll see that someone has replaced one missing button, but it’s a very poor match. I couldn’t find any in stores that came any closer myself.
Incredibly, I was able to locate the exact button used for my cape. It’s Waterbury 28393, called “Horses & Eagle”. Of course, it’s also completely obsolete. Waterbury, in business since 1812, apparently keeps all its old button styles on its website (hurray!), but, unfortunately, couldn’t tell me when this button was discontinued. In any case, I had to find something suitable to replace the ones on my cape. It wasn’t easy, especially since I really didn’t know what the significance of the original buttons was.
It’s possible that the cape and the button combination was customized for a particular school of nursing, or for a particular hospital, but I wasn’t able to turn up any definitive information that was specific to this cape. In the end I chose this button:
It’s Waterbury 29016 (Crest & Shield w/Angel & Eagle). I chose it because it most closely resembles the original button, and also because the symbolism made sense, too. In previous wars, nurses were often called “angels of the battlefield”, yet nurses also had to be fierce and tough like eagles, fighting their own battles in the wards and in the operating rooms.
Waterbury buttons are sold either in gross lots, or in specific sets, but not by the individual button. It’s possible to buy just a single set; in my case, it was a “blazer set” of five large buttons and five smaller. That gave me one extra of each size, which is always a good idea. This is an expensive way to buy buttons — or perhaps these are just expensive buttons! — and they arrived in a velvet box, just the way they would have if someone had bought them for a blazer or a fine coat a bunch of decades ago:
Behind each button on the cape (even the one that was replaced) is a tiny, flat, black anchor button, used to secure the heavy shank buttons in place, and to stabilize them. When I replace the gold buttons, I’ll carefully sew these right back where they belong, too.
I was amazed that the closure tabs were all there; the buttons were the only thing that held them in place. The first thing I did, in fact, was to take a few stitches on the right side of each of the tabs, narrowing the buttonholes so that the tabs couldn’t fall off. This in no way changes the look of the tabs; it just keeps that one side from ever coming off the buttons.
I’ll post a picture of the cape with new buttons installed in a couple of days.
It’s been almost six months since I last posted, and it will be another month before I’m back posting regularly, but I just had to acknowledge the arrival of a tool I expect to be using for the rest of my sewing life. It’s KAM snap press, model DK-98:
I’ve waffled about getting this for years now, torn because I wasn’t sure I’d use it enough, and because I just didn’t know enough about the people selling them. Dawn’s experience convinced me that I could order one and expect it to arrive, and I finally had a list of projects-around-the-house that was long enough that I figured it was time.
Mostly, though, I’ve wanted (for decades!) to be able to set decorative cap snaps without smashing the caps,something I’ve never been able to do with pliers.
This thing is a monster: It’s almost 18 inches tall, and heavy! See that “bubble” in front, on the base? That’s where you put a bolt if you’re going to anchor it to a work bench. There are two other similar holes around the base. The good news is that you don’t have to bolt it down to use it; in fact, although it requires some body language, setting snaps is really easy.
Most people seem to use these in home-based diaper making businesses, and at least one family uses it to make hospital gowns for charity. (They have a clever foot-pedal rigged up, which you can see here, since they are apparently setting snaps non-stop.) Diapers and hospital gowns both are well-suited to ue the resin (plastic-like) snaps. They’re softer against the body, and don’t retain heat when taken out of the dryer, the way metal snaps can (if only briefly). I’ll be using my own snap press mostly for metal snaps; I got the resin ones mostly to experiment with adult apparel.
Here’s what I ordered along with the press:
No the greatest picture, I’m afraid: The dots are, of course, snaps. The white ones on the left are resin, and the ones in the upper row are metal, spring-type (more on that later). The things that look like little tubes or columns are dies. The snap press is useless without them. You set the dies in place in the press, then put the appropriate snap part into the die, sandwich the fabric or material, and clamp the parts together to set a snap.
The allen wrenches at the lower right come with the press. They’re used to turn the screws that hold the dies in place. And that strap at the top? It’s the first snap I set with my new press: A size 28 (large!) bronze snap. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to set!
I got my snap press from The Snap Store. The service was very good, but ordering was a bit of a frustrating experience. The web site’s kind of a mess, and unless you already know exactly what you want, it’s a bit tricky determining how, much less what, to order. I completely gave up on trying to figure out if any of the special combination offers would work for me because I couldn’t figure out whether they were a good deal for my purposes or not. I’ll have some tips about figuring out what to order in my next snap press post.
Also, the website doesn’t state what KAM model this press it, which is a bit of a pain if you’re trying to figure out if the Snap Store dies will work with a press you already own, or with snaps you might get elsewhere. I’m quite sure it’s a KAM DK-98, though. There is at least one other KAM press out there, which is lighter weight (and a bit smaller), but I don’t know if it takes the same dies or not.
Dies are not necessarily interchangeable between types of presses, and getting any particular vendor to tell you what size shaft your press has (or what size shaft any particular die has) isn’t necessarily easy, so knowing your model is helpful when shopping around.
On the plus side, Wendy S., the Snap Store proprietor, was great about emailing me when one of my items was out of stock, so I was impressed with her responsiveness. And my order arrived exactly as requested, which is always wonderful! The Snap Store has by far the largest selection of snaps and dies compared to any other source I could find, and yes, I’ve already placed an order for another die set.
More about die sets, figuring out what you need, etc. in a future post.
