After some interruptions, daughter’s wedding, extra work etc., I am making a commitment, or renewing one, to blogging. And, in common with many other bloggers, I have decided to set myself a challenge, and record my progress.

I have been a subscriber to Threads magazine for many years, over 15 in fact, and have frequently been inspired by articles and features. Often, I have had every intention of using the technique or idea, but almost never actually got around to doing it. So, my challenge is to go back through my collection of magazines, and use an idea, a technique or a design from each one. I will document this on my blog.

I can remember buying my first issue of Threads, I had never seen the magazine before, or anything like it, and I was completely blown away. I bought a few issues from the newsagent, but soon decided to subscribe. This was in about 1997 or 1998, there was no internet, and even subscribing to an overseas magazine was a big issue. You had to go to the Post Office, buy an international money order, and send it off via snailmail. Later it became possible to enter credit card details on a form, but still send the form in the post. Then, of course, the internet arrived, and now renewing my subscription is as simple as entering details on a website.

The first magazine I bought was number 63, but since then I have bought a few back issues from before that. Actually, I have all the older issues on DVD, but for the purpose of this challenge I am restricting myself to only issues I have in hard copy. Even this leaves me with well over 100 copies.

Kwik Sew pattern for seam roll and tailor’s ham

The first issue I have is number 34, from April/May 1991. Looking through it, I noticed an article on basic pressing equipment, and remembered that I long ago bought a pattern for making a tailor’s ham and a sleeve roll. That decided my project for this issue. I dug out some fabric, leftovers from my stash, and the pattern and set to work. I looked for sawdust, but the local pet shop only had shavings, which I settled for. They are not perfect, but since they were quite small and soft shavings they are not too bad. I also made quite a mess with them, but the vacuum cleaner fixed that. I’m not all that happy with the shape of the sleeve roll in particular, it’s not as smooth as I’d like, but I think it will still do the job.  I already had a sleeve board, which is many years old and still was in its original cover, so I gave it a new cover to match. Last part of the project will be to get a box to keep these in, along with my pressing cloths, and other yet to be acquired pressing tools.

Finished articles, seam roll, tailor’s ham and sleeve board

All I need now is a title for my challenge, something cool and catchy like other bloggers have! Then on to dig out the next magazine and find myself another project.