Etsy and old thread

I don't know much about Etsy, having neither bought nor sold there, but Leigh's comment on my last post seems to ring true.  She wrote: "In some ways, that stack of thread is symbolic of exactly what Etsy has come to be.  Some guy who doesn't know jack about handcrafts trying to exploit the "warm fuzzy handmade" image to make a quick buck..."  If you either buy or sell on Etsy I recommend you read that NYTimes article.

But what I want to talk about is the thread.  Several people left comments on that post about finding old wooden spools and sewing with the thread.  Conventional wisdom holds this to be a no-no, because thread does get old and lose its strength.  If you pull a length of thread off an old wooden spool and give it even a half-hearted yank, it will break.  Obviously that is not a good quality if you are sewing a pair of pants or a hammock, or even a functional quilt that you think will be tugged and folded and occasionally washed. 

But if your thread is only used for things that will not be handled, or only for decorative purposes, who cares if it's weak?  I realized this several years ago when I was sewing a lot of "postage stamp" quilts, where each little bit is densely quilted before they're all sewed together in a grid.  I started  using up my old thread for the quilting, which was great because I needed lots and lots of it and didn't really care what color.

I don't sew the thread off my hundreds of wooden spools because I love to display them with the colors intact, but I certainly use anything on plastic.  Really cheap thread makes a mess as a top thread, because multiple trips through the needle hole pull off a lot of lint, but it works fine in the bobbin.

So if you find yourself with a lot of old thread on hand, whether by inheriting it from your mother's sewing box or because you don't turn over your own stash very quickly, do not feel compelled to throw it out.  Use it!  Except for hammocks and pants.

Form over function

Crabby again.  Yesterday's New York Times had a big story in the business section about Etsy, which is undergoing culture shock after new management took over.  The story was interesting and extensive, but I fixated on the photos they chose to illustrate it.  The online version sticks to photos of the people mentioned in the article, but the print version includes pretty shots of thread, scissors and cones of yarn, meant to put us in the mood of handcrafted stuff.

Well, that's fine, except for the thread.  Take a look at this photogenic display -- seven spools in a cute stack.  Except that four of them are wood!

When's the last time anybody making crafts to sell online used thread off a wooden spool?  Answer: never, because wooden spools went out of circulation before the internet was invented.

And the other three spools also look suspiciously old.  The gray thread appears to be on a styrofoam-like spool, which I seem to remember from the 1990s; the pink and yellow look like Coats & Clark plastic spools from a decade ago, before they switched to a tall, skinny format.

I wonder where the photographer came up with these antiques?  And I wonder why he (yes, it was a he) thought that would be a better way to illustrate modern commerce than the actual products that people use today?  I guess it's part of that stereotype that links sewing with pioneer days, grandma stitching on the treadle machine by the light of the oil lamp.  Yuk.

My favorite things 48

My mother owned a meat grinder that to my knowledge was never used to grind meat.  I'm not sure why she acquired it, but at some point in my adolescence it got to be used for cranberry-orange relish.  When my sister and I departed home for our own kitchens, we both noted that cranberry-orange relish made with other kitchen implements wasn't quite as good as the official home version.  We tried chopping up the fruit in Cuisinarts, or with knives on cutting boards -- close but no cigar.

I don't know what I did to deserve it, but my mother passed the meat grinder on to me, and for many years I have been able to make perfect cranberry-orange relish.  Obligatory for Thanksgiving and Christmas, welcome for many other festive menus. 

The original box is labeled "Meat grinder" in my mom's handwriting -- twice, because you never know which way you'll fit it in the cupboard.  A bit of research reveals that Rival Manufacturing, founded in 1932, made a whole line of kitchen appliances with similar names:  my Grind-O-Mat, a Juice-O-Mat, Can-O-Mat, Broil-O-Mat, Knife-O-Mat, Shred-O-Mat, Steam-O-Mat and Ice-O-Mat.  (But when they became famous for the Crock Pot, they abandoned this naming strategy -- I guess Pot-O-Mat didn't survive the focus group.)  The company history tells me the grinder was made sometime after the mid-1950s, and the fact that the address on the box has no zip code tells me it was made before 1963, which jibes with my memory of when we started making cranberry-orange relish.

You have to put it together, making sure that the sharp-edged cutting plate (the one with the big holes, not the small ones, because there are two) faces outward.  You have to put a drop of water on each of the suction cups to hold it firmly to the counter.  It's not as tight as it was in its youth (but then who is?) so it wobbles a bit when you get it working, and drips a bit of orange juice out the bottom.  Cranberries like to bounce out of the chute when you crank it, so you have to hold your hand over the top.

But it makes the perfect relish.   I couldn't do a holiday without it.

Kimono everywhere 2

People made all kinds of different things with the kimono in our challenge project.

Finger puppets, stored on black cones, dressed in kimono scraps:

A kimono-clad doll pendant, mounted on a silk-covered display board when it's not being worn:

Silk scraps incorporated into handmade paper:

Silk used in nuno felting:

More coming...

Kimono everywhere 1

About this time last year, a long-time friend and fiber art pal took a new job and had to clear out decades worth of stuff in the basement to move to Florida.  She asked me if I'd like to inherit a huge pile of vintage Japanese kimono, and of course I said yes.  Many years earlier she had ordered a bale of kimono to sell at quilt and fiber shows and other vendor outlets.  But before everything was sold, she had to give up the business and the kimono went into the basement.

If you've been following the fiber world for a long time, you too may recall those long-ago times when kimono and obis were for sale cheap, in the days when people in Japan were adapting Western dress and were happy to part with old clothes, especially those with stains and tears.  Now they're realizing the value of those vintage garments and the price has gone way up.

When I got the stash, I suggested that my local fiber and textile art group hold a kimono challenge, in which everybody took stuff home and did something useful with it.  All spring and summer we had the bins at every meeting for people to paw through and find stuff to strike their fancies.  And last week we finally had the big reveal.

What a huge variety of results from the same pile of raw material!  I won't be able to show them all in one post, so stay tuned.

Several people made things to wear.  A vest:

A necklace of yoyos:

Infinity scarves:

A purse:

More tomorrow....

My favorite things 47

In the olden days, toys were from a different planet than they are now.  For one thing, there weren't so many of them, and for another, they weren't made of plastic.  I have only two really old toys, which I suppose belonged to my dad and his brother.  They're small, just two inches tall, and now they live on top of the type case in my living room in a prime display spot.

The three monkeys are made of ceramic, stamped "Made in Japan" on the bottom, which probably means they were produced between 1921 and 1941 -- I suspect closer to 1921 because the boys were little then.  Remarkably they are still bright and unchipped after decades of being played with.

The painted metal dog, made in Germany (appropriate, because he appears to be a German shepherd), has an extra attraction: his head bobs on a spring.

I don't have many things from my parents' childhoods -- a doll quilt from my mother, these two toys from my dad.  So these are special.