Photo Album 2...and the Featherweight arrives!

More pics from the magical mystery photo album -- and so much more, my friends.  But first...

Who wants a Tom Collins?



Belly up to the (home) bar, boys!



Just three more drinks till dinner, hon.



Ray-Bans, madras shorts, chinos...







Grammy seeks a quick exit.



Don't eat the fruit, Bunny...



Happy Birthday, Chip!



Lots more fun pics of the life I'll never have but at least someone did here.

In other news...the Featherweight arrived yesterday!





Carrying case intact though a little beat up, as expected.  The inside is a bit moldy looking (and smelling).



And there she is.





Not for the first time with a vintage machine, I turn her on, she runs and then immediately seizes up.



I take off her hand wheel and find decrepit thread wound around the shaft.



Under the throat plate, ancient mystery lint.





I'm not entirely sure I understand how to thread her, friends, though I DO have the manual.  I did get her to sew a bit (with a fresh needle)



But then the top thread would get tangled up below.  Here one possible cause:





The hook is loose.  Do you see how it comes off that little protruding doohickey on the left?  I don't have the correct screwdriver for this so I'll have to pick one up later today if possible.

The good: her motor sounds fantastic -- strong and quiet -- and when I run her with no thread she's smooth as can be.   I'll need to tighten up that hook (I might disassemble the shuttle race first)  and take it from there.

This is the first time I've bought a used sewing machine and not been able to sew with her right off the bat -- disappointing, but I suppose it builds character.  The seller said she sews and that's factually true but there's no way, judging from the condition she arrived in, that she was fully tested.  They probably turned the light on, revved the motor, and called it a day.  

I'm glad to have her, though, and eager to get her sewing.  Now about the smell...  (Haven't we been down this road before?)

Happy Wednesday, everybody!  Any Featherweight fans out there?

What are you having?

The Photo Album

I don't know what came over me, readers.  At the flea market on Sunday I did something unprecedented and wholly in conflict with my new decluttering rules.  I purchased somebody's lost/discarded photo album.  And what an album it is!

It's not like I don't have family photo albums of my own; I do -- but they're nothing like this.  No, friends, this was the family album I wish I had, full of beautiful people living the high life with fabulous personal style.  I simply had to have it. 

I put the time around 1962; there are a lot of blanks (obviously).  Perhaps we can fill them in together.



Look at these women.  Look at those clothes, that pool, that house.  These are not models, my friends, they are real people.  Or the cast of The Graduate.
 
They played tennis at the club.



They had a maid straight out of Central Casting.



Beautiful dresses and plenty of cocktail parties.  When I was growing up we threw no cocktail parties, though there might have been the odd Jello mold buffet.  We owned no poodles.



They traveled to exotic places.



They lay about on the beach.





And they drank...



and drank...



and drank!



Who are these people and whatever became of them?  How did this most personal of possessions, the family photo album, end up on a grimy flea market table surrounded by piles of old brassieres (I resisted), moldy lavender sachets, and yellowed Playboy magazines?

There's more here, and I'll take better photos at some later date; this album merits more than one blog post, don't you think?

NOTE: If this is your family's album please email me directly along with some identifying information -- what is Aunt Gladys wearing poolside on Page 3 and what is she drinking? -- and I will see it gets to you, C.O.D.

Meanwhile, back in reality (or its MPB equivalent) my fifties Simplicity cocktail dress is coming along swimmingly.

I finished the skirt and most of the bodice yesterday and just need to attach them.  Then I'll start the matching jacket.  I am loving this dress.









Little mistake with the serger knife there; cost me a good hour and a half.  Whoops!



In closing friends, did you have cocktail parties growing up?  Did your entire family wear coordinating pastels?  Can somebody fix me a Vodka Stinger?

Have a great day everybody!

Liz Style

Like many people around the world, I was shocked and saddened by the death of Elizabeth Taylor yesterday.  It just seemed like that Dame was going to live forever -- she'd been through so many health emergencies and always pulled through.  Alas, this time it was not to be.

I've always enjoyed Elizabeth Taylor as an actress and admired her very public support of the gay community and people with AIDS at the height of the AIDS crisis.  In fact, I got to hear her speak at an AmfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) fundraiser about twelve years ago. It was exciting to see her in person, though even then her health was not great.

Elizabeth Taylor was a symbol of so many things -- perhaps most notably a lust for living life to the fullest. No one would argue that at seventy-nine she hadn't filled her cup to the brim.

It seemed like she'd been around forever and she felt like an old friend we begin to take for granted.

Today I'd like to talk about Liz as style icon, both in her film roles and her private life.  With her dark hair and heavy brows, her full figure and kittenish voice, she was the epitome of a kind of pull-out-the-stops glamour that seems, if not gone, then self-conscious and labored today (think every starlet at the Oscars).

I hope I don't offend, however, when I say that Elizabeth Taylor was extremely poorly served by the styles of her heyday period, the 1960s.  With her ripe hourglass figure, she often looked shoehorned into the mini dresses and wacky psychedelic youth-quake fashions of the period.  Moreover, while sometimes slim, she was never skinny, in a period whose fashion icons were Twiggy and Penelope Tree.

This only made us love her more, I'd argue, because with her high-profile marriages and jet-setting lifestyle, she made it clear that she didn't care particularly what anybody thought.  She gained weight and lost weight and wore as much jewelry as she wanted.  She wouldn't make anybody's Best Dressed list -- she was no Audrey Hepburn or Catherine Deneuve -- and she clearly wasn't trying.  No Paris couturier made her his muse.  Even before camp, Liz was campy.  Refreshing!

In her MGM days, her public image was carefully controlled by the studio, and dressed by Helen Rose or Irene Sharaff, she looked elegant and alluring, both demure and vampy.

Then the Sixties happened and everything got bigger: the career, the scandals, the jewelry, the hair -- and la Liz herself.

If you've ever seen 1965's The Sandpiper you know that tent-like beach cover ups and caftans were not her best look, yet that movie spawned a thousand sewing patterns...nearly always with a facsimile of Liz on the front.

As the headlines and scandals eclipsed her acting career, the outfits got kookier and the films less memorable.

Into the Seventies it all got bigger still, and you just knew Liz was in on the joke -- she didn't care if she raised eyebrows or invited criticism, she was going to do her own thing.

Into the Eighties and beyond, it was more of the same, and she continued until health problems slowed her down, and even then, she was always around, showing up at celebrity weddings and funerals, launching a successful perfume line or a jewelry business.

Liz was the model for taking what life gives you -- in her case, beauty, talent, and drive -- and running with it.

She will be missed.

Any favorite Elizabeth Taylor movies, looks, or other memories you wish to share?  Please leave a comment below.