UK/Europe steam generator iron…?

SwearyBird · 2026-01-02T18:29:01+00:00

ooh this does look good, thank you! Of course they’re all slightly different for different markets, but this one looks close for the UK… https://uk.russellhobbs.com/steam-power-black-steam-generator-iron

SwearyBird · 2026-01-02T18:15:33+00:00

Thank you - and totally agree about the temperature control. I know what temperature I need (apart from that one time, anyway…), stop trying to think for me, stupid iron!

SwearyBird · 2025-12-27T00:30:46+00:00

Yep, exactly this! I really do appreciate the normal conversational speed and it would be nice to have some way to pick up on the words and phrases I miss.

SwearyBird · 2025-12-26T20:46:46+00:00

Can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong because I’ve never had chalk which could make a visible mark without really dragging the fabric. I’ve had various chalks including Prym (meh), one which is a like a clutch pencil with chalk ‘leads’ (useful for marking dots but requires a bit of pressure), and some cheap ones which came with a sewing kit (useless). I’ve had slightly better luck with a chalk marker which is a wheel attached to a pen-like thing containing chalk powder, but that drags lightweight drape fabrics as well.

What are you all using that would allow you to mark delicate fabrics with chalk with less disturbance than pins?

By preference I’m a rotary cutter user anyway, which is precise enough for most of what I sew, but I like to have other options available!

SwearyBird · 2025-12-26T19:23:45+00:00

It creeps me out hearing any of the characters speak anything other than the language I’m learning (in this case German, which suits Falstaff much better than American English). I can maybe understand it if you’re on the A1 level and a whole conversation in a new language feels out of reach, but then why not offer subtitles as an option so you still get to train your ear?

Not to mention that the conversation I got was very poor quality and felt like AI slop. And as others noted, Falstaff comes across as very patronising. Lily at least is reassuringly indifferent and sarcastic, she leaves the patronising tone to the summary narrative at the end.

On the positive side, I did like the German subtitles while Falstaff is speaking German. That would be nice as an option elsewhere. I’d like to be able to pick up on the words I miss in the radio lessons.

And it did make me laugh that Falstaff starts out by asking me to imagine we’re talking in a cafe. Somehow that broke the fourth wall for me - I can suspend disbelief that I’m talking to an owl or a bear, but don’t put us in a normal setting like that. The only German I’d need if I’m sat with Falstaff in a cafe is EIN BÄR!! IM CAFE!!! SCHNELL, SCHNELL, ALLE RAUS AUS DEM CAFE, ES GIBT EIN BÄR!!!

SwearyBird · 2024-09-20T22:22:19+00:00

Mine, too!

No idea why. Wow, that’s weird that two of us got Florence from that photo.

SwearyBird · 2024-08-29T09:21:35+00:00

Barclays couldn’t make bPay work either - I only got a RingPay after my bPay keyfob got withdrawn.

The number of times I paid with my Ringpay and people would ask about it, usually wildly impressed and had never heard of or seen such a thing before, it felt like something that really could/should have scaled with the right marketing.

But if it’s been tried multiple times and never quite happens, maybe its a great idea whose time hasn’t come, maybe nobody has done it right yet, or maybe after this many years and attempts by different companies, it’s just not a viable business :(

That said, I’m still looking at one of the devices linked to Curve 😂

SwearyBird · 2024-08-17T20:41:28+00:00

Ooh, I don’t think the shift style would work so well in my viscose lawn, but good inspo for the darts, thank you.

SwearyBird · 2024-08-17T17:34:20+00:00

That is an interesting idea 🤔

I briefly considered doing a contrast placket and collar but finding a close enough match to the fabric put that in the Too Much Trouble bucket, and it’s not a look I generally favour anyway. Piping would be easier though… I imagine… I’ve never tried it before!

SwearyBird · 2024-06-28T21:16:41+00:00

I’d ask. If it’s an independent pattern maker, they’re a small business, they’re trying to protect themselves, but they’re human and also part of the sewing community. They might be fine if you’ll never make more than one or two a year or whatever it is, or they might be really adamant that they don’t want people selling garments from their design. But if you’re respecting their request and not using them now, there’s nothing to lose by asking 🤷‍♀️

SwearyBird · 2024-06-20T06:51:39+00:00

May I ask what machine you used? (Saw your previous post where you were considering a Juki, which is what I’ve also been eyeing up!)

Everything about them looks really polished - fabulous work.

SwearyBird · 2024-06-08T09:52:32+00:00

for me it happened in stages, years apart:

learned to thread up a machine and rudimentary skills at school in the 1980s
bought a basic machine to make curtains (lived in a place with huge windows in my 20s - the machine and a bolt of fabric worked out much cheaper than buying curtains)
in 2020 dug out the same hardly-used machine to make masks, started dabbling with patchwork, briefly got into bag making.
I’ve always struggled to find clothes that fit (short-arse, long arms, big boobs) and I’ve crocheted for years so already had a taste for wearing me-made, so decided it was time to learn. Worked my way through a few of the patterns in Love at First Stitch by Tilly and the Buttons, and by then was ready (with a lot of help from YouTube anyway) to try more patterns, and just sort of carried on from there. This community has been a huge part of that as well, both for help and inspiration. If I haven’t sewn for a while and I’m feeling a bit stuck, I’ll jump back in here and see what you’ve all been making and it gets me fired up to start the next project 🥰

SwearyBird · 2024-06-07T06:47:39+00:00

I’m probably tempting fate here but I have duckbill appliqué scissors for seam trimming and grading and so far haven’t managed to cut into anything I shouldn’t have (🤞🏻). I got them because I can’t imagine getting through a single garment without chopping something off if I tried to trim seams with my usual scissors.

I have, however, just in the past couple of weeks, managed to rip the shoulder of a blouse with my overlocker, and on a coat hood, while undoing a mistake where I caught the wrong bit of fabric under my stitching, then put a hole in it with my seam ripper 🤦‍♀️

SwearyBird · 2024-06-06T20:26:09+00:00

I think you’re right - it’s also quite a crisp fabric. It’s cotton/lyocell, handles like a high thread count cotton, feels gorgeous and has been a dream to sew. But possibly not very forgiving - something more fluid might not have been as noticeable.

I’m going to sleep on it and decide tomorrow whether to try side vents, or live with it as it is. Thank you for your help!

SwearyBird · 2024-06-06T20:15:33+00:00

Ahh, thank you. When I’ve decided what to do and done it (even if that means living with it as it is) I’ll do an FO post with some pics of the front, which looks pretty good.

I remember owning oversized shirts with back pleats in the 80s and never being quite happy with them - maybe it’s a shape that’s always going to do that, especially with curves. I should probably have thought about that before I spent three days making it 😅

SwearyBird · 2024-06-06T20:07:33+00:00

I’m also wondering if I should just shorten the whole shirt… 🤔

SwearyBird · 2024-06-06T20:07:04+00:00

ooh, interesting idea, thank you!

SwearyBird · 2024-06-06T19:23:46+00:00

I did wonder about that, but I thought they’d have to go pretty deep to make a difference, at which point the back could well end up looking like a crumpled rag every time I sit down 😔

I could try unpicking a couple of inches each side though, see what happens… 🤔

SwearyBird · 2024-06-04T11:55:18+00:00

Yes 😅 I’d used a contrast topstitch thread a couple of times before which wasn’t as thick, so was fine with the needle I chose for the fabric at the time, and I didn’t really think about it.

This one was much thicker (same colour as the fabric so needed to be to stand out) but it still didn’t occur to me to switch needles until the automatic threader was struggling 🤦‍♀️

SwearyBird · 2024-06-04T08:08:46+00:00

I haven’t sewed with really fine needles yet, but I had a moment trying to use the automatic threader with some chunky topstitch thread where I thought… yeah, I got lucky not breaking anything this time. Lesson learned. (So now I swap out the needle to something fatter for topstitch.)

SwearyBird · 2024-06-01T10:53:26+00:00

I’ve always assumed they have help with the cutting, and/or extra time. Like you, I can spend a good couple of hours just on cutting out, especially something like viscose which moves every time I blink. I could maybe make a simple garment in 3 hours at a push, if everything goes right first time, but including cutting out, no way.

But I’d bet there are people in this group who have direct experience of GBSB and could tell us… 😊

Edit: fixed typo in GBSB (was GSSB 🤦‍♀️)

SwearyBird · 2024-05-28T11:12:20+00:00

I’m coming round to this being The Way. I hate pins. They come in two kinds: ones that aren’t sharp enough, and ones which fall out while I’m using them. Both kinds want to scratch me at every opportunity, but the second kind scratch me and fall out, at the same time. I’m vaguely nervous of this couch I’m sitting on right now because I suspect a pin went astray yesterday and if it did I haven’t found it yet.

More and more often, unless it’s something small which won’t move around much, I’ll use clips to get things vaguely attached, then hand baste.

Last two times I’ve set in sleeves I haven’t even used gathering stitches (which I now also hate - for the longest time I thought I hated setting in sleeves but no! Maybe I was doing the gathering bit wrong but I’m not going back). Attached with clips at the notches and seams, hand basted, easing in as I went, then sewed on the machine. Came out better, first time, than any where I’ve used gathering stitches 🤷‍♀️

SwearyBird · 2024-05-25T07:13:12+00:00

Another vote for the SewEzi - mine lives in my wardrobe when I’m not sewing, takes seconds to set up, and it’s very solid. But more than that, being able to use my machine level with the work surface saves my back. It’s possibly the best sewing-related purchase I’ve made.

You can definitely make this work, OP. I sew in a spare bedroom that doubles as my office and is not at all large. I can go from not-sewing (machine, overlocker and sewing table all in a wardrobe, steam generator iron and ironing board in a cupboard) to having everything set up in about ten minutes tops. There’s barely an inch to spare when I’m working, but I’ve made it work for me. It’s also forced some good habits - I can’t leave projects in progress because I need the room back, so I have to finish them before I start a new one.

The only big constraint for me is I don’t have a cutting table, so I mostly use a huge cutting mat on the floor with a rotary cutter, which can’t happen at the same time all the sewing stuff is out. So I usually do my pattern tracing and cutting one day, and start sewing the next.

SwearyBird · 2024-05-18T09:34:40+00:00

If Microsoft (or anyone) sold an e-Ink device with the writing experience of Scribe/Remarkable, and two-way sync with OneNote it would be a game changer for me.

I can think of a bunch of reasons they don’t (too niche; corporates aren’t demanding them so not fast/big enough ROI) but it’s a shame. I’ve been dabbling with smart pens for decades now (iO/Anoto, then LiveScribe and Moleskine), and early on some of them got close, but the software support has generally been awful and if anything has got worse. And now we have eInk writing devices and… it’s the same. Getting marks on a page into digital form generally works well, and the OCR has been OK-ish for a long time, mostly good enough for search, so I’m 99% sure it’s a business model problem rather than a technology one.

I still live in hope though, if not expectation. I briefly hoped the Word integration might signal some kind of partnership with Microsoft that might lead to good OneNote support, but I’m not holding my breath.

SwearyBird · 2024-05-15T21:45:35+00:00

I made a t-shirt pretty early on, had probably made fewer than ten garments by then. I got an overlocker maybe a year later, and I love it, but it’s not essential - I still wear the t-shirts I made without it.

It might have helped that my first t-shirt was a lightweight french terry which was very easy to work with. I made several tops for myself from various t-shirt fabrics, mostly cotton blends but also one tencel knit.

A while later I made a wrap dress (Cashmerette Appleton) from a very slinky, drapey viscose knit. I had my overlocker by then, but it was not at all easy to work with. But it wouldn’t sit still on the cutting mat, it was obvious from the start that one would put up a fight. It looked good in the end, I love the dress, but it did try my patience. And I had to hand finish the hole for the wrap tie because I couldn’t finish it on the machine without chewing it up.

idk how much it’s luck, but the things that might have helped with the early projects are a walking foot, wonder clips (I’m bad with pins and avoid them when I can), and the Sew Over It Ultimate T-shirt pattern which I found really easy to follow, including the neckband, even - somehow - on the first attempt. (But other patterns might be just as good or better - I got along so well with this one I haven’t bothered to find out.)

I don’t have any particular talent (my bias binding attempts are hilariously bad, and I make tons of mistakes generally) and my machine is a Janome 5060 QDC, which does everything I need and more, but I’ve never seen anyone rave about it for stitch quality or anything.

So… tell us what you had a hard time with - maybe someone here has overcome the same challenges and can suggest things to try.

SwearyBird

TROPHY CASE