Warehouse Sale at Phillips Shirtmakers

Last week I went to this place, which was having a warehouse sale. I didn't go through the actual shirts, lovely though they are: I went for the fabric. They were selling off large quantities of shirting fabric, quite a bit of it 'vintage'. I don't know what vintage exactly, but I do know that new was one price and 'vintage' another, and I bought stuff from the vintage section (because I liked it, not because it was vintage in particular).

CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF SHIRTMAKING

Phillips Shirts is a proud Melbourne based shirtmaker crafting
quality casual, business and formal shirts.

Seasonal shirt collections feature art fabrics sourced from
Liberty London and other reputable European mills.

A hand-picked selection of unworn vintage shirts is availablefrom our archive.

Unbelievably in this era of cheap imports and overseas manufacturing, this company still makes shirts in a tiny factory in the CBD, Little Lonsdale Street to be precise. The fabric sale was held on the factory floor. The fabric storage area was rather cramped and uncomfortable. While I'm sure the women involved are going to do some lovely things with any fabric they bought, I don't think the mother with the small toddler really thought through taking her child to such a location; and I am certain that the mother with the huge pusher did not! I wanted to point out that having a huge pram blocking exits (no matter where she put it) was creating a fire hazard, which is a serious concern in any textile factory, but thought I would get told off for being mean to mothers (and please don't abuse me - if there had been a fire the baby would have been in the most danger of all).

You could fill a shopping bag with remnants for $5. I have a lifetime of remnants, but I did end up collecting a bag of various bits of white and off-white shirting fabric for embroidery purposes (and there was a scrap of pale blue in that lot). There was also a pile of remnants of the lovely fine iron-on interlining that is used in commercial shirts, which I added to the bag.

Baby Bear, fresh from an exciting morning rubbing shoulders with our State Health Minister (as was on the day, we have had an election since) launching a collaboration between Family Planning Australia and YEAH (Youth Empowerment Against HIV/AIDS) to improve sex education in schools, joined me and bought a bag of remnants to do exciting things with.

I also bought three dress lengths. They are all vintage cotton - the green one is seersucker.

And then I found these handsome vintage chappies. Carved from wood - roughly but with beautiful lines - and one of them wearing a silk bow tie. I;m sure they have a history but I couldn't find out anything at the time. Does anyone know anything about them?

Blogtoberfest 14

This was a group exercise we did at college in third year called I Can See Through You.  We all had to produce something simple using sheer fabrics - an applique or something - and then we all collaborated with [inning them on to a very compliant dress model.  It was good fun.  I think the pink bit at the top was my piece but I can't really remember after all this time, though I am pretty sure I did something pink.  It took about an hour to pin everything onto the model in a pleasing way.  There was never any intention of sewing it together or doing anything permanent but it was a fun exercise in collaboration and doing something a bit different.

My Creative Space

I am trying to turn my 'Mazey Patchwork' into my signature style, and this week has been about working on this piece and taking close ups of it.  Basically it is a stitched form of complex cloth, which once it comes off the machine is cut up into random shapes and then further embellished with hand stitching, beads, buttons, etc, lined with satin or something similar and turned into brooches and other fabric jewellery forms.

Enjoy!  And enjoy other creative spaces here!

F is for Fabric

Over the years I have accumulated quite a lot of fabric of one sort and another. I used to make most of my own clothes. I don't really now, because I have branched off in other directions and found that I was resenting the time it took me to do dressmaking. So now I buy most of my clothes and have pretty much decided to have a holiday from dressmaking.

I used to dabble in patchwork. I have a goodly accumulation of patchwork fabrics. But I discovered that I hate, and am not good at, quilting, so I gave up on patchwork. That fabric won't be wasted though, there are lots of smaller projects that don't need proper quilting that I plan to do in good time.

And lots of that fabric can find other uses, too. I am now constantly on the lookout for interesting background fabrics for embroidery - which is what this lot of four is for.

The funny thing is, when I started the Studio Stitch course I went in there not really wanting to do embroidery - I wanted to use scrumbling as much as possible. But I have rapidly become quite obsessed with embroidery and keep reading books about it and even dreaming of projects I could do.