Category Archives: nostalgia

November 15, 2009 · 4:35 pm

Mid-Century Sugar Dispenser

The above is a photo, hastily taken in my father’s kitchen, of my grandmother’s sugar dispenser. With full permission, my dad got it when my grandmother moved to her condo, and was no longer in the mental or physical condition required for entertaining. My grandmother had it for about as long as anyone can remember, and it is a bit of industrial design genius: you pick it up, with your index finger through the loop. With your thumb, you depress the black plastic plunger. From the spout on the opposite side, precisely one “portion” of sugar (I never measured, but probably a teaspoon) drops out and into your cup of steaming tea or coffee. It doesn’t leak. It doesn’t stick. It has never broken. It isn’t ugly. As you might imagine, every member of my immediate family (and a few less-immediate members) want to get their hands on this item. And we have looked for others. Oh, have we looked. The only mark on the item is a very clear “Suko” stamp on the bottom. We have searched etsy, we’ve searched eBay, we’ve searched Google. Nothing. Nothing even like it. And so I now ask you, Dear Readers, have you ever seen anything like this, perhaps in your grandmother’s kitchen? Preferably in your local hardware store, where they have a dusty old case of 24 sugar dispensers that they forgot they even had? WE WILL BUY THEM.

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Filed under citizens, family, nostalgia, vintage

June 18, 2009 · 9:27 am

Vintage Sewing: Part Five

Bonus dress edition!

When my friend Alison started this whole “Let’s plan a weekend to get together and sew from vintage patterns” idea, I already had a stash of patterns from which to choose, and some vintage curtains that I’d deconstructed into panels of fabric. I was ready to go!

I was ready to go, that is, until I discovered that the vintage pattern I’d chosen was missing pieces. Important pieces. As in, all of them. All I have for Simplicity 3282 is the sleeve, cummerbund, and skirt pattern for View 2. A lovely dress that I still hope to make one day, when I draft a replacement bodice, but I had NO pieces for View 1, which I’d intended to sew. I scrambled to put Plan B into action, and as yesterday’s post attests, it went off well. But here were are at Sunday, and my sewing buddies who chose fully-lined patterns and troublesome fabrics are still at it. Sooooooo… enter Plan C. As I mentioned in Part Two, I had already found a modern pattern, McCall’s M5686, which was similarish to the vintage Simplicity 3282. So, what the heck? I have the time, and the fabric. Let’s do it!

I’ve never sewn McCall’s before, so I check my measurements against the pattern size chart, and am shocked (SHOCKED!) to come up as a 6. Really? I double check. Yep, those are the measurements. Well, alrighty then. I cut out the pattern, minus the sleeves which I am leaving off as I try to emulate the vintage pattern. I add two inches to the skirt length, for the same reason. I cut out the fabric. I mark the pieces, all of which have pleats all over the dang place and require lots of marking, to be followed by lots of folding-ironing-basting. I finally start sewing. When the bodice is together, I do a test fit… and it’s too small.

Too small!

Alison grabs the pattern envelope, and finds ANOTHER size chart, this one on the envelope FLAP, which puts me at a 12. Well, that’s just a little different, now isn’t it? ISN’T IT? Yikes! I have excess fabric, but not enough to cut out the whole dress again. And ugh, those pleats. It takes me about 12 seconds to decide that I’ll open up the side seams, and add fabric panels. Which means I have to do math. Oy! Okay, let’s see… 5/8-inch seam allowance, times eight by the time I’m done adding TWO panels, and the zipper still needs to go in, so let’s see. X times Z, carry the Y, drink a glass of wine, divide by N, and what do we have? Okay, I shall cut two 3-inch panels and slip them into the side seams of the bodice, which should add 3.5 inches to the finished circumference. And then the same for the skirt. Done and done, new fitting, crisis averted. Whew! Hmmm, that two inches that I added to the skirt length is no longer as much excess as I’d thought. The skirt will now become a rolled hem, to maximize length.

Okay, so now all I need to do is finish the arm holes where I left off the sleeves and… hey. Don’t these look a lot narrower than they do on the pattern envelope? They look a lot narrower. I don’t really want them to be narrower. And I don’t want sleeves, even cap sleeves. Hmmm. Alison suggests finishing them with bias tape. Hey, that’s a good idea! I’m not thrilled with the idea of my dress potentially looking like a ringer tee, but better that than sleeves. I make a quick run to JoAnn.

JoAnn closes 15 minutes before I get there. I really want to finish this up while I still have momentum, so I decide that I will make my own bias tape. Self fabric is the way to go! Yay!

Okay, now, um, how do I do that? I sit down with the 1949 edition of The Complete Book of Sewing (an early birthday gift from Alison; if you’re going to sew vintage, you may as well have vintage sewing reference) and look it up, to discover that it’s exactly how I pictured it as I drove back from JoAnn. Cut cut cut, iron iron iron iron iron iron IRON IRON IRON and finally, ready to sew. I sew the new bias tape, I add bows at the shoulders, and voila, I have a dress, with POCKETS:

CIMG4858

CIMG4861

CIMG4862

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Filed under fashion, friends, nostalgia, sewing, vintage

June 17, 2009 · 9:18 am

Vintage Sewing: Part Four

I left you all on Saturday morning, when I had created my graded pattern but had yet to cut out my fabric. Things went fairly smoothly, aside from accidentally leaving the zipper opening on the right, rather than left, side of the dress, ripping out the seam on the left side, and then restitching the exact same seam, which of course required ripping it out again. Argh. By the end of the evening, my sewing friends had completed the full muslins-as-linings for their more complicated patterns, and, because I had no lining to mess around with, I had a finished dress:

CIMG4870

I say “finished,” but I have every intention of going back in and putting in a side-seam pocket. I need pockets. As long as I keep altering this pattern, I think I’ll also move the zipper to the center back next time, which will call for a doubly-long zipper but eliminate the whole right/left issue. Now that I’ve successfully sewn my first vintage pattern, and graded/altered it as well, I just can’t seem to stop messing around!

I wore the now-referred-to-as-Dragon Dress out in public to go to the store on Monday, and received no fewer than SIX compliments on my dress from complete strangers. How lovely! It’s cottony-comfortable, fun to twirl in, and apparently looks quite flattering. The only caveat (aside from a serious lack of pocket) is that when I crouched down at the store to look for something on a bottom shelf, the skirt spilled around me in a three-foot radius, thus preventing a store clerk from restocking a wide swath a shelving until I got up again. Which really isn’t a problem for ME as much as for the people AROUND me.

Tomorrow: Vintage Sewing Weekend’s Bonus Dress

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Filed under collections, fashion, friends, nostalgia, sewing, vintage

June 13, 2009 · 9:23 am

Vintage Sewing: Part Three

When last we met, I had located fabrics from which to make a muslin (from the Hope Chest line of vintage repro fabrics by Spring) AND a finished dress (a set of Asian dragon-themed sheets) from my chosen vintage pattern (7245 from an unknown maker, if you haven’t been following along). All I needed to do was get to it!

Sunday found me re-ironing the vintage pattern, and ironing the fabric that had been folded in my linen closet for five years (no easy task). I traced, I marked, I cut, I researched what a common seam allowance was at the estimated time of the pattern’s production. I sewed the neckline facing on backwards, because I always do that. I ripped out the offending seam and properly restitched the facing. I used my rolled-hem foot for the first time. I put in my first side zipper, and it looks it. The stitching is neat along the sides, but leaves something to be desired at the short ends. And it’s the wrong color.

The dress, which my mother estimated would be a size too small, is actually two sizes too big.

Pinned/clipped on my mannequin:

Yesterday evening, I graded a pattern for the first time. I transferred the original pattern to posterboard, and made sizing adjustments. I also shortened the hemline by nearly three inches, and made the skirt fuller. Today, I shall cut up the sheet set and get together with some sewing friends, and hope hope hope that my first attempt at pattern grading is successful!

NOTE: The toile shown above is for sale at my etsy store, and knowing that the buyer will likely rip out the zipper and redo it, it is priced accordingly.

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Filed under fashion, friends, nostalgia, sewing, vintage

May 29, 2009 · 11:07 pm

Too Pretty To Die

Mal: [under cross-fire] Bendis, look at me! Listen. We’re holding this valley, no matter what.
Bendis: We’re gonna die.
Mal: We’re not gonna die. We can’t die, Bendis. And you know why? Because we are so… very… pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh? Look at that chiseled jaw, huh? Come on!

I met Johnny in a pool. That is, I was in the pool, but Johnny was too cool to sport swim trunks, and was lurking at the edge in his deep-cuffed jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He cut a dashing figure, and my friends encouraged me to flirt with him, in spite of my protests that he had a very good-looking girlfriend who had kindly “saved” me from a semi-creepy guy who was actually IN the pool with us.

Johnny came right up to the edge of the pool and introduced himself to me. Shook my hand. I have no idea what I answered to whatever polite question he probably asked, but I remember that he told me he was in school, living in Long Beach, and was starting up his own company that would make reproductions of vintage clothes, starting with the sweaters beloved by his vintage motorcycle club.

We found each other on MySpace and while we never had three-hour talks over coffee (or beer), or pondered together the meaning of life, we did pop in and check on each other from time to time. We would have little email conversations for an evening, and then lose track of each other for a month.

When I next saw Johnny, it was at the Viva Las Vegas weekender a year after we’d first met. I was on my way to see the Chop Tops, and Johnny was heading in the opposite direction. I waved, and he came straight over and gave me a fantastic hug. I couldn’t help but notice that he was wearing a really well-made ’40s-looking motorcycle sweater with his name chain-stitched on, and I guessed it was one of his own creations. He handed Nick his card, and explained that the clothing company was up and running. At the car show the next day, I saw that his company, OddBall Brand, had its own vendor booth. Johnny and a partner were manning the booth, and Johnny came out to give me another of his (apparently signature) deep hugs. I was on the hunt for a particular handbag that I’d spotted earlier, so I said my good-byes and figured I’d see him at the pool the next day. I never did find him. He went to Europe after VLV, so it was a couple/few weeks before I pointed out to him in a message that we hadn’t had our photo taken together. I teased that we’d have to make up for it next year.

Tonight, realizing that it had been a while since we’d last written, I cruised by his MySpace page to see if anything interesting was happening in his life. Specifically, I visited his company’s MySpace page first, to see if any new designs were being released yet. And I saw the blog headline, “Sun May 17 1:11 AM our Pres/Founder John Slisko passed away…” Well, that can’t be right. Is his dad a financial backer? But I thought his name was Peter? I clicked on the link.

And my heart fell out.

Our first President and Co Founder of ODDBALL MC, John Sliskovich, was killed in a motorcycle accident at El Mirage lake bed 2:11 AM Sunday morning.

He had ben at El Mirage since Fri. with some of his MC, the ODDBALLS, and a couple members of the Regents MC for a campout/bike riding weekend.

Just after midnight sunday morning there was a motorcycle accident out on the lake bed and an ambulance went to the scene. John and his friend Buck went to see what happened. John was riding a 1940 BSA. It’s top speed was 55 mph. Buck saw a berm coming out of the darkness and hollered to John. Buck laid his bike over. John seems to have landed face first into the lake bed. No helmet. It doesn’t seem that a helmet would’ve helped.

He wasn’t moving but he was breathing. The ambulance from the first accident, which was close by, couldn’t come to John’s aid as they were trying to save the life of their accident victim (a fight they weren’t able to win). At some point John stopped breathing and his friend Frankie, who has paramedic training, was able to get him breathing again. The ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later and just as it did John stopped breathing again. The paramedics went into CPR but couldn’t bring John back.

I don’t think it would’ve mattered how quickly the ambulance got there, it doesn’t sound like there was anything that could’ve been done for him.

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED IN BUCK’S WORDS, (the only witness)

“Johnny didn’t suffer for a second- he was just havin’ fun, doin’ what he loved & in the blink of an eye he was out.
That berm came into view too late for him to do anything but hit it head on- I was ridin’ right about his back tire & right as he hit the berm I hit the skids, I saw his bike pop up & out of my light & I just layed my bike down & slid up over the berm. Later, lookin’ at the site with the CHP we could see that he unfortunately hit the berm at the highest possible spot & right where he would have landed & maybe begun to get control of the bike there was a big crater that would have caught his front tire & caused the bike to flip on it’s side- he lit there & the bike continued to tumble. It was a perfect set up for the worst possible outcome but I can promise you John never knew what hit him.” -Buck

I know that Johnny and I weren’t best friends, we weren’t even what I’d call close, but there is still a hole in my heart. Johnny was kind and genuine and a go-getter and yes, one handsome sonofabitch. I always assumed we’d have a chance to get to know each other better, but I’m glad that I got to know him at all.

slisko