I need to make a first post, although we haven't gone anywhere yet, or I won't be able to find this blog again! So here's a little pic of my Vesta Saxonia to keep us all going...

I suspect this will be the machine we use the most outside, as she's very light and her case is small but sturdy. The only problem will be finding needles, as she uses narrow, round-shanked 12x1's, which are no longer made. But I have high hopes of tracking some down - sadly I'm sure people are throwing them out, thinking no-one will ever want these - much like they do with the machines themselves.

Plans are afoot for making a quilt-top; we toyed with the idea of making a wearable garment in each location, but I could see this getting rather out-of-hand as pleats and tucks were being discussed... and that was just a wrap-round skirt! If we had enough narrow-hemmers it might have been a handkerchief, but being thoroughly modern misses in other ways, they'd never use those, so a quilt it shall be.

So this blog is a way of justifying the space my "rescues" take up; those that can't go off to Africa to enable someone to make a living, or be rehomed with someone who will love & use them. It's a way of showing that these little old snippets of history are still useful and have a future in a world which may need to reduce its power-consumption quite drastically. It's also a History & IT project from the home-education angle, and a way of demonstrating that teenage girls can have fun and make something useful in a thoroughly old-fashioned way!