Experience tells me that the different textile techniques are not equally well suited to a crafts demonstration, and unfortunately, sewing is one of the crafts not too well suited - since most people have already done it themselves (mostly in school, to learn how it's done) or at least seen somebody sewing by hand, they tend to just glance over and then walk by. So for yesterday, I mostly wielded the hand-spindle and distaff - that is usually quite fascinating for visitors - and I thoroughly enjoyed spinning without checking for the right thread thickness after every sitting-height-to-floor-bit of thread spun, as I do for the Hallstatt project.
And now, it's back to the normal projects for today and the next two days, including prepping and packing for the medieval market and fair at Tannenberg, where we'll spend the second half of the week and the weekend.
2 comments:
Re: sewing in public -- I've found that people do stop and look more often when you're making a shirt. While everyone knows what hand sewing is like, most people have never imagined making shirts by hand, so it does draw some attention. The part that takes some ingenuity is how to arrange things so that people can tell it's a SHIRT from thirty feet away.
(That said, yes, it's much easier to draw attention when you are hand spinning.)
Chris, yes, arranging that shirt might be a bit of a problem... especially when you are in the very first stages of work and it's not really very shirty-looking. But since I have a number of different techniques to choose from, I usually take the easy way out and just demonstrate something that is inherently attention-grabbing.
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