Italian day again, new dress. Fixing your colours.

My daughter's Italian day dress got ruined when I washed it. Yes, it was me. However, I hadn't expected the fabric not to be colourfast. According to the lady in Spotlight, none of the fabric they sell is! So, what do you do? According to most sources, brine (salt water) is the way to get the colour to stay in the fabric. I also read that if the fabric is silk vinegar is more appropriate. For some reason, I started getting cravings for fish and chips when reading about this.

So, carefully selected some red and some green drill then started the tests. Cut off a little red and dropped it into some water. Yes, the colour started haemorrhaging instantly. The green just as bad. Couple of litres of water and about 1/2 a cup of salt and lowered all of the red into it. A couple of hours later rinsed it and not much came out! Great stuff. Emptied it and repeated with the green.

So, with Simplicity 5945 (view 1), I simply replaced the side panels with a green on one side and a red on the other.

It was easy to make this and only took half a day to get this far:

Didn't have to ask for help either. Love it when this happens. Means I'm learning something or the pattern was ridiculously simple. Well, bit of both perhaps.
Here is the final  dress, modelled by the girl:

Same as the other one except for hemming and the bow.
The hemming was done on a Singer 319K I picked up free of charge two weeks ago. It was seized but a full weekend later and it's really very smooth and beautiful. Had to re-do the wiring too. Would have done the whole dress on this machine except a few days ago I won a 1960 401a on eBay for $13.45, also not working. Funny how easy it is to get these things working and it was hard to select one for this job, seeing as both were seemingly perfectly suited. The 401a got the most work done but when I tried blind hemming it, I needed instructions. The 320K2 manual is the only one I had at hand, so grabbed it. They were specifically for the 320/319 so I grabbed the 319 and got to work. I have to say, Singer designed some amazing machines in the late 1950s. Both of these machines were made around the same time, and they're both smooth and almost faultless. If I were making or hemming jeans, though, I'd go for a 201 or my 96K. The small motors aren't really up to it.

Singer 401a

I bought a 401g (German made) a few months ago. Apparently it's a fantastic machine that can do everything. It's called "slant-o-matic" and I say apparently, because I don't use it. Well, I love sewing on the 320k so why change? The 401 was just there because I was told I had to have one, and it appeared.
So, now that it was sitting on the shed for months, I see a 401a (American version). This model is probably not as good and it said "doesn't work" on the ad. Well, how couldn't I have a go? I picked it up and had it fixed in no time. Can't even recall what the problem was, but was probably lint. SO which one to keep... You'd think the German version. It is truly more handsome and almost certainly better engineered and built. That's not just because of the German thing, but they were made later, in the 1960s. The American one stays, because it had a full set of accessories and the original manual. It was a one owner machine and apparently I value that sort of thing more!
Here is the 401g:

Isn't it lovely? When you look from the side you can see why it's called slant-o-matic:

And the 401a:

Very similar but it doesn't have that rocketeer thing happening at the top. Well, the differences when a machine is this good are stupid. It's like choosing whether to live in a mansion in Paris or a mansion in Switzerland: They're both such unbelievably good options that it doesn't matter!
The 401 has a vertical bobbin, so you can also do embroidery with it. As a bonus, this machine was designed so you can fit not just a needle into its needlebar, but two needles! Yes, two needles can go in, meaning you don't have to buy twin needles for special patterns.