What hobby do you think a 29-year-old, sports-loving mechanical engineer with a bachelor’s degree in “Sports engineering” is most likely to have? Correct! She is a hobby seamstress.
Jennifer Dannheimer’s profession is training coordinator at ROBUR WIND in Bremen and she herself lives in Schleswig-Holstein. This is where she ended up when a former employer offered Rheinland-Pfalz or Schleswig-Holstein as a place to work and the proximity to the sea clinched the deal. She is now mainly responsible for the training and further development of ROBUR WIND’s “blade people” throughout northern Germany, i.e. the colleagues who check and maintain the rotor blades of the wind turbines.
To balance out her job, which often takes her to the top of wind turbines (sometimes 100 metres above the ground), Jennifer designs clothes for all kinds of occasions. Jenni, as she is known by her friends, started sewing when she found an old Quelle sewing machine in her mother’s cellar and just wanted to try it out for herself. The desire for “fitting” clothes provided an additional motivation. Many off-the-rack garments are not made for tall sportswomen with broad shoulders, so the sleeves are usually too short or something else doesn’t fit well enough for the wearer to feel comfortable.
The first attempts quickly turned into a captivating hobby. In winter, Jenni spends 10 hours a week sewing, and around 4 hours in summer. Sometimes more on holiday, when she has to spend 60 hours on special pieces like a woollen winter coat. And then she sometimes goes completely off the grid for a couple of days: “Tailoring is a wonderful balance to the classic office and training job. You can do something creative with your hands and have a result right in front of your eyes. This is a lot of fun – especially when you notice how your creativity and your own style develop.
The people who benefit from her hobby include her husband, sister, parents and sometimes even her friends. Her husband, an enthusiastic weightlifter like Jenni, and her twin sister, who works as a fitness trainer in Munich, are delighted to receive perfectly tailored garments.
Finding the right fit is actually not that easy. There are all kinds of patterns online, but adapting them to the individual body type and style is not always simple. Jenni sometimes makes sample pieces from old curtains and other fabric scraps in difficult cases, with the final fabric only being used when the fit is right. Speaking of which, anyone who wants to get rid of such fabric remnants can make her day by contacting her. Or, alternatively, you can simply try your hand at the hobby yourself. New materials and motifs, excellent video tutorials and detailed e-books make it really easy.
Jenni’s “machinery fleet” is, of course, befitting that of a mechanical engineer. The old Quelle was quickly phased out in favour of a modern Pfaff machine and supplemented by a Singer combination machine. A plotter was added to the range at Christmas, which can be used to cut films that can be applied to T-shirts as creative motifs using an ironing press, which was also a new acquisition. “An inexpensive hobby machine like the one from Quelle was good to start with and to try things out, but if you are serious about it, it is well worth investing €500 to €800 in semi-professional sewing machines,” is Jenni’s advice to all those who want to try sewing and tailoring.
Jenni is not really one to recommend when it comes to alterations. A special drawer for trouser legs that need shortening or missing buttons is stuffed to capacity, and harbours many pieces that could in the meantime be considered vintage.
Jenni doesn’t take any money for her work, not even when she does services for friends: “That spoils the fun, so at most I get reimbursed for the cost of materials.”
As with many others, Jenni is currently working a lot from home. The shared living room has since become an office, gym and sewing studio. However, to compensate for this, her partner is allowed exclusive use of the much smaller study in their shared flat.
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