Looking back

I find that I can’t begin a craft blog without looking back on my history of making things – so here goes.

At school we were taught needlework in a very formal way which did not suit me at all. I spent more time unpicking my work than sewing and while the rest of the class were progressing to the excitements of aprons and skirts I was still making – and unmaking – my gingham needlework bag. Although one report grudgingly allowed that my hemming had improved, I just could not see the point of the Victorian standards of plain needlework we were taught and was glad to get on to ‘academic’ subjects and leave that kind of sewing behind.

At home my mother was an accomplished needlewoman who had majored in art and needlework at her Teacher Training College. She could see that I was happier with my head in a book and did not press me to learn. She enjoyed making embroidered and smocked dresses for me when I was a child and later made me several dresses to my own specification, even once in a bright orange cotton which I loved but she knew would not suit my high colour!

However when I grew older and decided that I would like to make clothes for myself she taught me how to cut out material from a paper pattern, pin or tack the pieces together and sew them with an electric machine. She also taught me how to skip-hem, enough to keep the hem up but nowhere near as obsessively neat as I had been taught at school, which was a revelation! For my twenty-first birthday my parents gave me a sewing machine of my own which stayed with me for many years.

I enjoyed making clothes for myself and have been going through my photo collection to find a selection.

I made this long brown tweed dress in the late 1960s and wore it for my degree ceremony in 1970.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And here is my wedding dress from 1970, which my mother helped me with, and my going-away outfit, a beige crimplene short coat over a dark brown rayon mini-dress with white spots and a huge collar, which I thought rather smart at the time!
 

I went on making clothes for myself and, as time went on, for my three children. I loved buying fabric but also got great satisfaction from recycling clothes and other textiles. I made my daughter Julia a fancy-dress fairy outfit from the train of my wedding dress but I will end this post with a picture of a jacket I made in the mid 1970s from an old chenille tablecloth. The body of the tablecloth was a dark orange but the edge had a geometric design in brown and dark blue which I placed on the front of the jacket. I only have a black and white photo but it does show an important part of my sewing history.

 

 

In my next post I will be talking about knitting and also about how my sewing moved into craft.