Something new from something old

One of my favourite pastimes is what I call ‘customising clothes’. This involves making my clothes fit better, or altering their style, or dyeing them, or all of those.

I find this much more satisfying than making new clothes from bought patterns because it’s more creative and means that I have what feel like new clothes, but are also familiar comfortable ones perfectly adjusted for me.

Here are some recent projects.

These orange trousers had become flimsy with washing and no longer worked as straights. I turned them into flares with some stiff pale-blue denim, and now I love them even more than before. They suit my flamboyant streak and I know Frog would love them too because they hark back to the hippie era of our teens.

I gave this t-shirt to Frog for Christmas but he only managed to wear it once. I’ve taken it in at the top and the sleeves, and now I wear it all the time. It assuages my grief.

I bought these two pairs of trousers shortly after Frog died, when browsing the internet for clothes was a way of staving off panic. One was in shades of pale blue and one was white and cream, none of the colours practical for dog-walking through mud. I therefore dyed the pale-blue pair ‘denim blue’ and the other bright pink. Subsequently I lost lots of weight and they hung off me. I took the waistbands off, made darts in the top and attached a new waistband.

Note the bi-colour waistband here, which is partly a homage to the trousers’ original design and partly because I couldn’t decide between stretchy and non-stretchy denim so used a bit of both.

The (wonky) darts in the back

The bi-colour theme is still visible after dyeing, especially in the blue pair

They both still hang off me but at least they stay up, and the wide waistbands come all the way up to my waist unlike the old ones which cut me off mid-stomach. I find that much more comfortable and do that to most of my trousers (including the orange ones above, as you might have noticed).

I’m now wondering what to tinker with next, and also how to conclude this post. Perhaps there’s a metaphysical connection. Perhaps I’m making something new from the old life Frog and I had together. (And that's as far as I can go for the moment.)

Turning something old into something new: a to-do list for October

I am a workaholic. I was brought up to think that the day must be filled with ‘useful’ activities. This of course is anathema to creativity as the best ideas come (to me) when I’m doing something ‘useless’, like lying on the bed resting, walking aimlessly, sitting in the car, watching television.

Recently however I’ve run out of ‘useful’ things to do. I think I might have created this situation deliberately, in an attempt to leave space for new things. That doesn’t however make it any less painful and, as I said to Frog yesterday morning, I feel like I’m stumbling round a dark house.

‘Life’s catching up with you,’ he said.

I liked that. It made sense.

In the meantime, before I regain my sense of direction, I have to fill my days somehow. (Don’t I?) So when I read Kate’s ‘To-do list for October’ (see her blog 'I live, I love, I craft, I am me' ) I thought I’d compile one of my own. I didn’t intend to publish it, but Kate – who’s done so much to keep us all going, through the lockdown - suggested I did ‘so that we can all support each other as we go along’.

So here it is.

Garden/pool

I started off by listing all the jobs that needed doing (eg clear and clean the greenhouse, fetch manure, put winter cover on pool, put garden furniture away) and then I decided that was against the whole spirit of the exercise and nothing like Kate’s inspiring list. So I decided instead to say:

Bed garden and pool down for the winter – lovingly.

Sewing

By now I was better at the exercise so, instead of listing jobs, I decided that for me the purpose of sewing was to have fun. 

Even though I do occasionally follow patterns, like this new one that I’m turning into a purple shirt for Frog . . .

. . . they’re only starting points. I need to remember my first love – making do and mending – turning something old into something new.

I’m also at the moment craving a sewing room – something light and spacious, instead of a darkish corner of my study. Even though I can’t imagine where we’d put one or when we’ll ever be able to afford to build one, there’s no harm in starting to plan what I’d like.

 

Writing

Here, I listed my aims, which are:

-To change the direction of this blog. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I want to dig deeper.

-To continue with my Secret Blog. This is something I’m writing just for me. At the moment it’s what you could call a ‘stream of negative consciousness’ but I’m letting it go where it will in the hope that it turns into something.

-To keep alert to stories, so that I can start a New Novel.

In my experience stories come to you; you can’t go looking for them. As Stephen King says in his hilarious On Writing which I’m reading at the moment (more about that another time, perhaps):

‘There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun.’

-To build my confidence. Confidence creates ideas. Lack of confidence kills them.

For the last two years I’ve been working hard with affirmations, under the guidance of the wonderful Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

But, as Frog pointed out recently, affirmations are just a starting point. You have to then put them into practice as this makes them real and proves them and gives you confidence in them, and creates a benign circle so that you carry on healing. So between us we decided that I could do something every day that’s new or scares me. Hence this post, I suppose!

 

Dog-walking

Because I do the main dog-walk mid-morning, I’m usually hungry and longing to get back for my lunch. Consequently I don’t always walk as far as both Ellie and I might like. I could change this routine.

Even though Frog and I have been adventurous recently, trying new walks when we go out, at home (when it’s just me and Ellie) I’m limited, but perhaps I could make small changes, such as doing walks backwards.

In other words, I can turn dogwalking from a chore to something new and confidence-boosting.

 

Cooking

I used to enjoy cooking supper because I combined it with my daily glass of wine. Since early August however I’ve cut alcohol out of my life, partly because it just wasn’t agreeing with me (however little I had) and I was feeling slightly jaded all the time (not to mention getting far too many migraines) and partly because I decided that blurring the edges of my life wasn’t helpful at the moment. I was following the ethos of my parents – work hard, drink hard and don’t think too much – but it wasn’t mine.

Now, I have to enjoy cooking for itself which I don’t particularly but I do enjoy eating and creating healthy food for Frog and me, so I decided to see cooking as time filled with something productive (I’m trying not to say ‘useful’) instead of time wasted. Another chore that I can turn into a pleasure.

 

Sorry about all this woffle. This post is something new for me, and I’ve let my thoughts and feelings run instead of marshalling them with my usual rigour. Thank you for reading it, and I hope that in some tiny way it might have helped you, or at least echoed something you feel yourself.

I realise too that I haven’t mentioned anything about autumn or the Lockdown (which featured in Kate’s list). But they do come into it. Another time perhaps.

The Trap, The Sewing Bee and The Novel

It’s been a long time since I blogged – for various reasons – and the longer I leave it the more difficult it becomes to start again. I have however been thinking about a brief update of some of the topics I’ve touched on in past posts, so here it is.

The Trap

The police visited the farmer and he said he wasn’t trying to catch buzzards (which is illegal) and checked the trap every day and let them out. What he was trying to catch was foxes so that he could shoot them as they were killing his chickens.

Apparently it’s legal to shoot foxes – which I didn’t know – so the police left it at that.

I shall still check the trap if I can as trapped birds beat their wings against the bars of cages and can hurt themselves.

And I’m looking into organisations that protect foxes, as I find it horrifying that they can legally be shot.

Earlier post – ‘Meltdown’

Our local fox, last seen in March. Is she still alive? (Photograph by Trish Currie)

The Sewing Bee

My 'tunic of many colours' is at last finished. It’s turned into a dress and changed its name to ‘my lockdown dress’. It doesn't look half bad on, even though I say so myself, and I might even wear it.

Earlier posts - 'Sewing Bee', 'A top of many colours', 'Circle, Triangle, Square, Star, Splat'

My lockdown dress

The Novel

I’ve received the second report and, while it’s more positive than the first one, still flags up lots of problems with The Banker’s Niece (see right). Consequently I’ve decided to leave that novel for the moment and try to start something new. I think I’ve had enough of TBN anyway and the report – though painful – has helped me make a decision about it.

I realise now however that writing TBN has kept me going for the last ten years and that without it I feel like I’m nothing. Hence the lack of blog posts, perhaps.

Fingers crossed that I can start something new.

It was a wonderful experience serialising the novel on this blog (as I wrote its final draft) and enormous thanks to all of you who followed it at the time as well as those of you who've read it since. You've made it worthwhile.

Earlier post – 'My creative life (or something like that) and a list'

Circle, Triangle, Square, Star, Splat

Like the previous post, this is written for a blog link-up party hosted by ‘I live, I love, I craft, I am me’. The theme this time is photographs of geometric shapes. Do have a look at the other entries.

Circle

Here's an almost perfect circle (spotted by Frog), formed by a bridge on the Grand Western Canal near where we live.

Along the Grand Western Canal a week or so ago. (Spot the dog.)

And here is a picture from the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal in Somerset which we were able to visit yesterday after a three-month absence. It was very busy, lots of people obviously having the same idea as us. The sun and planets are ranged along its length at correctly-scaled intervals and in their relative sizes, which is an inspired idea, and has almost (but not quite) got me remembering the order of the planets. The sun is an enormous orange ball about ten feet high (but we didn’t go that way this time so I don’t have a picture).

Saturn, on the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal

Triangle

Here at last is our shade-sail, temporarily installed. As explained in a previous post, sunshades, gazebos etc don’t stand a chance in our garden as it gets so much wind, and the shade-sail is our latest ruse. Thanks to Primrose.co.uk for getting it to us, in spite of the difficulties the lockdown has caused them. We did have to wait seven weeks, but we trusted them.

Spot the dog, slinking off. Because of the noise the shade-sail makes, she thinks it might be a new form of hot-air balloon, one of the few things she's really frightened of. Hopefully, she'll get used to it.

Square
It took a lot of digging to create the 2 ½ foot deep post-holes for the shade-sail, most of which was done by Frog. My job was to trundle away the earth in a wheelbarrow and tip it into my new raised vegetable bed, also made by Frog.

Star
The bees are loving this geranium in flower in our garden at the moment. I’m loving the flowers' colour and their delicate markings. I’m not a painter but I’d like to be and a few days ago I tried to paint one of the blooms. I found it impossible to re-create their loveliness.

And I can’t resist showing you this picture of elderflower blossom yesterday, shining like a constellation of stars from a dark hedgerow. Its scent was intoxicatingly lemony and for the first time I understood why people use it for making drinks.

Splat

I don’t know if this counts as a splat, but here is a mind-map I’m creating for a possible new novel. I haven’t as yet made connections between the items as all I’m doing at this stage is writing up things like dreams, memories and stray thoughts as they occur to me, as well as more conscious ideas (which are probably the least helpful). In true lockdown fashion, I'm using the back of large pieces of patterned paper I found lining the drawers of a chest I've inherited from my mother.

I’ve used mind-maps in a more structured way (with connections and sub-connections and pathways) for novel chapters and blog posts for a while but this random mind-map is a new idea.

I’ve also been formulating a list of dos and don’ts connected to creativity – more of this in due course perhaps.

Own choice

And here is my lockdown indoor project, the tunic of many colours (and many geometric shapes) made from leftover pieces of material, intended for those rainy days which we haven’t had. Consequently I haven’t got very far with it.

This is the top of the tunic. There's a handkerchief skirt to come, made up of a pink piece of material, a green piece, and three purple pieces. 

And that's more than enough about me. I intend in future to write in a much more general and informative way . . .

PS As I said in the previous post, if you've arrived here through the blog link-up party you may not be able to access the links. Tune instead to www.belinda-whitworth.blogspot.com

A top of many colours

Thursday 16 April continued

Even though it’s sunny there’s a strong north-easterly wind which makes it cold so, having done my tour of the garden, I decide on an indoor occupation. I will cut out a top I’m planning.

    Because all the sewing shops are closed I looked for a pattern online, intending to make a loose, sleeved, tunic-length shirt for the summer, as befits my age (mid-60s). Instead I ordered this.

It’s probably far too young for me (I fancy the sleeveless version with the handkerchief hem) and I have no idea whether it will work but the only loss is the cost of the pattern as I’m making it from material I already have (seeing as I can’t buy any new), with each section the remnant of a different summer garment. In fact, it doesn’t have to work because all I’ll have to do is explain that I made it during the lockdown and people will understand. For once I’ll have a good excuse for my dress eccentricities.

After a fun couple of hours juggling with bits of material I decide it’s time for some yoga. I’ve started doing yoga in the garden as I was beginning to creak, missing my weekly class in the village. Because it’s made me feel so much better, I've resolved to try and have at least a short practice most days even though I rush it when on my own and don’t get the mental and spiritual benefits.

    Online classes are another option but that involves moving furniture, setting up an ancient laptop which I’ve never used before and battling with our almost non-existent broadband.

    Ellie thinks the mat is a new sort of dogbed – unsurprisingly since it’s placed on her favourite spot for keeping watch on the world.

When I start my exercises however, she wanders off, ever tactful. I’m flattered that the birds on the hand keep coming to the feeders nearby. I hear the flutter and brrr of their wings.

We’ve been early these days ‘battening down the hatches’ (as my father with his naval background would have said), giving ourselves a break, and watching television for most of the evening with a clear conscience. Frog keeps up with essential coronavirus news during the day so we allow ourselves to avoid any programme that mentions the dreaded corvid (as I call it – although I like crows) and stick to comfort viewing.

    While I prepare supper he watches a programme about a Yorkshire steam railway, which I’m only too pleased to miss as I find the unreconstructed male engineers and their disparaging comments about their wives hard to stomach.

    I managed to fill the freezer and store cupboard before lockdown and now take two Clive’s pies out of the freezer, a mushroom one which is Frog’s favourite and a chillified kidney bean and veg one which is mine.

Two of Clive's pies, handmade in Devon with love (as listed in the ingredients)

I mash some potato and mix it with the last of the hummus so as to give Frog his quota of garlic as well as spice up the potatoes which are tasteless. The only potatoes with any zing come from Waitrose, to which we would have to make a special trip, and so far we haven't made one. (Every trip is an effort at the moment and every time I think of the film 28 Days Later  - Google it if you don't know the plot. It's a good film though.) Lastly I chop and steam a vat of my home-grown broccoli - which is anything but tasteless.

After supper, as we settle down to a ‘Poirot’, the phone rings and I race to answer it while Frog sets the recorder. I see from the display that it’s Frog’s sister J.

    ‘J!’ I say. ‘I’ve been meaning to ring you.’

    It’s true. She was top of the mini-list I make each day to remind me of what I could be doing, but I decided to email instead as I’m not a fan of the telephone.

    ‘Ah,’ she chuckled, ‘I must be psychic.’

    Which is a very nice thing to say seeing as it’s several days, if not a week, since we spoke and her husband died two weeks ago. I did ring her a lot to start with and then wondered if I was being a nuisance so decided to take a step back. She obviously doesn’t mind.

    She’s now self-isolating because of her age and state of health and because when they finally took her husband to hospital he was found to have coronavirus – but as he’d been in bad health for many months if not years and very poorly for weeks it hardly seems to matter.

    However, like Frog (and unlike me) J is amazingly pragmatic and positive and now sounds more confident and more herself than I’ve ever known her. She’s been sorting out her clutter (she’s even more of a hoarder than Frog), dancing to her old records as she goes through them, and with the help of a grand-daughter planning her husband’s funeral.

    We can’t go because she lives the other side of the country and because only 20 people are allowed and that number is easily taken up by children, grandchildren and her husband’s family who all live nearby. She’s planning a bigger do after lockdown.

    She’s written five pages of A4 about her husband for the funeral and, because she thinks I’m a writer, she wants to read them out to me.

    I listen, rapt.

    ‘Well?’ she says at the end. ‘’Could I be a writer?’

    ‘You already are,’ I say.

    I hand her over to Frog, and after an hour and a half we return to Poirot, worn out by the unaccustomed contact with the outside world.
 
Sometimes recently a picture has come into my mind of Frog and me alone on a boat in the middle of a vast ocean. I wonder how we would cope if anything happened to either of us.

Sewing Bee*

I’m fighting blackness at the moment, for lots of reasons: finishing (the current draft of) The Novel and waiting for professional report on it before I can go any further; winter and this bloody rain which seems to have been going on forever; the dreaded coronavirus and the threat it brings of not being able to go out or travel; as well as the usual – the state of the environment and the state of me. And one of the ways I’m distracting myself is sewing.

I’ve always sewn, even when I was a child. I don’t remember playing with dolls but I do remember making them clothes and lining them up proudly in their new outfits. I made everything in an ancient book I found on the shelves at home called One Hundred Things a Girl can Make and every 'Blue Peter' project. Then, when I was a teenager and already way above average height as well as anorexic, I started making my own clothes and altering those few I found in the shops that vaguely fitted. And I’ve done the same ever since, in part now in reaction to Frog who’s always in the shed or garage or his music room busy on some practical project or other.

Last time Frog’s niece K came to stay she gave me a pair of her jeans. I thought she was chucking them out so I took them to pieces, intending to turn them into a bag. I’d told K about my fondness for customising clothes and keeping old clothes so as to use them to alter new ones so I wanted to show her that I was putting her old jeans to good use. Before I did so however, I emailed her to check that she was OK with my plans.

    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you could turn them into shorts for me or trim them with leather or lace.’

    Bother, I thought. Why didn’t she say that before? And what am I? Some sort of servant? Her mother?  I did feel a bit guilty though. She’d admired a green dress I was wearing in the summer and asked if I could make her one to the same pattern, but when she tried it on the shape didn’t suit her, and anyway I was busy writing so didn’t want to embark on such a long project, especially for someone else, and how I was I going to fit it to her shape when she wasn’t there? So I demurred.

The (much-faded) green dress

Perhaps, I thought now, I could turn The Jeans into a dress for her.

I have a beloved 2004 pattern that I’ve used for summer dresses many many times (including for the green dress), in many different fabrics and lengths.

I’ve made a version for a neighbour and most years I make a new version for myself.

Last year's version - in purple batik

A blue linen version I made in January this year

I’ll adapt the pattern for her, I thought. It’ll be a challenge.
    I told her of my plan and asked her for her measurements.

    ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Can we review this later? I've not been training for 2 weeks due to an injury and I didn't behave on my diet and relaxed . . . ’

    I remember the feeling well – buying/making clothes that would fit ‘when I lost weight’, wearing the same thing over and over again because it was the only thing that did fit, not having any clothes at all. (My anorexia having metamorphosed into compulsive eating.)

    Too bad, I thought. I need to do some sewing now. I’ll guess the sizing. That'll make the project even more of a challenge.

And here is the result so far. I’m pretty proud of it.

Especially the red topstitching, courtesy of my new sewing machine which replaced the 45-year-old one I had to abandon with much sorrow last year.

I plan to put the jeans’ back pockets over the bust and use the jeans’ waistband (with its loops) as a belt to cinch the loose waist of the dress (which is what didn’t suit K). All with more of the red topstitching.

And to use the skirt material to face (line) the top.

And I’ll probably put more topstitching around the neck and armholes and down the front button-panel.

I haven’t yet decided on the colour of the buttons – probably black, as red (or purple) might be a step too far.

Whether K will like it and whether it will fit her, I’ve no idea. I hope so.

* 'Bee/B' is my nickname but the title of this post is also a homage to that excellent TV programme 'The Great British Sewing Bee'. I hope they do another series.

   I wrote another post on this subject seven years ago (help!). Click here to read it. You'll also find posts by clicking on 'sewing' in the category list to the right.

Sewing B

A couple of months ago I said to Frog, ‘There are all these cookery programmes on television but why is there never anything about sewing?’ And then, lo and behold, a few weeks ago, ‘The Great British Sewing Bee’ appeared on BBC2.
    I’m hooked. Although the programme spends too much time on the sewers and not enough on the sewing (of course), it’s giving me ideas, revealing to me just how much I don’t know, and legitimising a passion that has long been one of my guilty secrets (‘clothes are frivolous’, ‘colour and texture are women’s things and therefore not important’ etc etc).

    Strangely, at around the time the programme started, I had decided to stop writing for a while. It was too difficult to find the time and the space. The dog hated me doing it. I was worn out after eight months of intense concentration. Sewing raced to fill the gap, albeit largely in its ‘making do and mending’ guise – which is something else that has the function of legitimising my passion (I’m ‘saving’ money, not spending it on unnecessary things like clothes). As follows.

We are lucky enough to be going on holiday to a Greek island in the summer and an Ikea bag, I have discovered, makes an ideal beach bag, as it’s a good colour and big enough and light enough for all those essential items for a day walking and beaching – mat, towel, swimmers, book, water, suncream, map. Its straps unfortunately have Ikea blazoned on them and I’ve never liked that. Then I came across some webbing that I’d used many years ago to turn a shop-bought hand-bag into a shoulder-bag. That bag is now defunct but the webbing lives on.

My sunhat is too big. It slips over my ears when I get hot (and sweaty). While going through my drawer of bits, I came across the ties from a long-dead linen skirt. Here is one of them trimming my hat and tightening the brim.

I made a shirt in which to travel (hot ferry but necessity for modesty) but decided it was boring. I’ve tried to cheer it up with some material left over from a dress I made last year. I still don’t like it.

And then I splashed out. I bought two lots of Indian cotton from the newly expanded (and recommended) Exeter Fabric Shop with which to make beach dresses.

One of the patterns I’m using is thirty-five years old. I last used it the year Frog and I married and I wore the dress until it fell apart. Frog has persuaded me to use the pattern again, even though I wondered if it was too young for me (but then of course reusing patterns is so thrifty . . .).

So there you are. B and her sewing. Where it’s all leading, I have no idea. I'll never make my fame and fortune this way. But, then again, I'll probably never make it writing either. And at least the dog's happy now.

Snippets

I’m stuck on The Novel again, so here I am, back after an absence of over a month, for which I feel bad (as if you were hanging on my every word). Thank you for still being there.

The reason I’m stuck on the novel is that, when I wrote the first draft, I plonked chunks of my autobiography in it in what I thought were the appropriate places. Now, when I come to go through the book again, I find that the chunks are completely unusable. Because they’re ‘true’, they don’t expand and blossom like fiction does. They’re fixed and I can’t do anything with them. I’m going to have to completely rewrite them, using my Imagination. I feel daunted.

Reading Nina’s lovely blog (http://www.ninafenner.blogspot.com/) this morning I was honoured to find a mention of one of my posts. It was about sewing, so here is another snippet.

A few weeks ago when we saw the sun, I was inspired to go through my bin bag of summer clothes. As I tried the clothes on, I realised that I am now too old to wear above-the-knee skirts, so I let down the hem of one dress, sewed a matching band on to another (it was a dress I’d made and I had some material left over) and adapted the two items in the picture.

The band round the bottom of the dress comes from a skirt I shortened a few years ago (talk about ‘make do and mend’). The skirt I lengthened by extending the underskirt with a band of similar material – which is fine until the wind blows.

They look all right, don’t you think?

Another preoccupation at the moment is a course I’m thinking of doing. It’s training in something called the Lightning Process, which cured my niece’s ME. I’m wondering if it will help my migraines. Any comments?

Making do and mending

A few years ago I dropped a pair of woollen gloves while out walking Dog. A neighbour found them and brought them back.

    ‘I knew they were yours’, she said, ‘because the fingers were darned.’

    Frog and I were brought up in the fifties, a time of austerity and ‘make do and mend’. We both take great satisfaction in adapting, repairing, tracking down in unusual places and prolonging the life of – in his case technology and in my case clothes.

    Frog has sheds full of broken-down machinery chucked out by other people. He can’t bear to see it go to waste and, whenever he has a spare moment, tries to nurture it back to life. (What he does with it then is another question and a small bone of contention between us.)

    I don’t exactly have sheds full of clothes but I do have the aforementioned chest - of bits of material, sewing gone wrong, and worn-out garments that could conceivably be reused in some other guise . . .

. . . not to mention a drawer full of bits of cord cut from posh shopping bags (that I use in projects such as the caftans I make for Frog), a ragbag, two crates of  old bed-linen, curtains, rugs and tablecloths that live under the spare-room bunks, and a suitcase of clothes I’ll never wear again but can’t bear to move on such as the psychedelic-patterned orange-and-pink trouser suit I made in my teens . . .

and the purple-and-black-striped lurex dress and jacket I wore in my twenties.

    I may also have mentioned that I’m tall. This means that I can hardly ever get clothes to fit. Either I have to buy men’s clothes which is depressing or I buy women’s and adapt them.

    One of my ruses is to combine two short t-shirts to make one long one. As you can see from the picture at the beginning of this post, the top and the bottom don’t usually match, but no one has ever commented on this particular eccentricity in my dress. Perhaps I am abetted by the current (or maybe not so current) fashion for wearing two or more t-shirts on top of each other. As you can also see, I sometimes extend arms as well.

       Mostly I use up old t-shirts for the extra bits, but I didn’t have anything appropriate for my current project, a white shirt. Luckily I found a size 20 white t-shirt in Sainsbury’s sale rail for £1.12p. More than enough material. What a find! (Even if non-PC.)

The work-in-progress

   
You might think from these pictures that pink and purple are my favourite colours. Actually, they're my second-favourite colours. Emerald green is my first but it's hard to find. I do have a lovely emerald-green t-shirt but sadly it's starting to go into holes now. It's a man's t-shirt so I took in the chest and the arms, and it has the word 'bollocks' on the back so I have to wear it inside out. I acquired it when I was helping my sister-in-law clear out her wardrobe. It was one of her chuck-outs. Another lucky find!

My big fat Greek cardigan

This post is for Nina (http://www.ninafenner.blogspot.com/ ) – and of course for anyone else interested in the minutiae of customising clothes.

    About fifteen years ago while on holiday in Greece I bought a cardigan, hand knitted in wool from Greek mountain sheep with wooden – olive wood? – buttons.

I loved its colours – bright purple with emerald green – but not its shape. It stopped in tight ribbing just below stomach and bum, and made me look as if I was about to give birth. Never mind. I could probably alter it.

    If I’d been my sister or my mother I would have unpicked the bottom and reknitted it but knitting is not my forté and I didn’t have the confidence. I could see at best an awful ridge where I’d tried to pick up the stitches or at worst the entire garment unravelling. Over the next few years I tried various other solutions, like stretching the ribbing or knitting an insert for the sides, but nothing worked. I was going to have to be brave.

    All the way round the cardigan above the ribbing I sewed a piece of tape, and above that I sewed another piece. I then cut between the tapes all the way round. Phew. The ribbing was off.

    I then folded up the bottom of the cardigan, using the tape to make a neat(ish) hem, and tried the cardigan on. Wonderful. It fitted much better.

It was still lacking around the neck area however. I like interest in the neck area. It disguises the fact I have no bust. And I still had a long strip of ribbing that I didn’t want to waste. Brainwave. I would use the ribbing to make a collar.

    I did, and it worked. The tape already along one edge of the ribbing disguised the join. I used the whole length of ribbing and it fitted around the neck perfectly so you can see how tight it was around the hips.

I wore the cardigan every day during the cold spells of the last two winters. As well as being wonderfully warm and cheering, it felt just right, like mine now, and every time I put it on I admired my handiwork.

Afraid I'm not going to pose with the cardigan on.
I haven't got the hang of self-portraiture yet and my hair needs washing.

   

Sorry, I’m sounding smug. Perhaps I’d better tell you about the chest I have of sewing that didn’t work. But at least the material can be cannibalised and used to adapt other garments.