Last week I decided it was about time I rang my mother and thanked her for teaching me how to sew when I was young. She has an amazing array of skills but has reached 76 without them being fully appreciated. Half a century ago, she was doing what we all need to be doing now - using hand sewing skills, making things for ourselves, improvising patterns and being thrifty with materials. I hadn’t really appreciated how lucky I was to have such a mother until I heard people coming into the studio saying that they wished they’d learned to sew, especially how to use a sewing machine, when they were children. Needless to say, my mother was pleased with the phone call.
When she was 20 (early 1950’s) it was still hard to get hold of new fabrics. She made skirts out of curtains and a suit out of her grandmother’s old coat. It looks as though she could have bought it from Chanel though it looks a little crumpled here after a long train journey to a wedding.
When she went to Paris with her friend they make dresses out of white parachute fabric. I love the way the Gendarmes are looking at her!
As a result of this conversation on the wonders of dressmaking I found out that although my grandmother wasn’t a sewing fanatic like my mum, she too had always made clothes for the family. She bought mum a Singer sewing machine for her 18th birthday and later used it herself to make me a coat. She was unpicking a coat of her own that she had worn for years and carried many happy memories in its folds but was now faded and falling to bits, when she found that the inside of the wool fabric was still a rich burgundy colour and well worth saving. So here I am, wearing that precious fabric in the form of a new coat made by my grandmother, complete with fur collar.
No wonder I have a coat fetish
How fantastic would it be if we still bothered to unpick old clothes that reminded us of happy times and made them into new clothes for our children and grandchildren?
Maybe you have to be under 5 to appreciate wearing your grandmother’s reworked coat … Will have a look in my wardrobe and see if there’s anything there that I don’t wear that’s made of such gorgeous fabric that even my fashionista daughters would be pleased if I cut it down and made something for them. Perhaps if I tell them it’s ‘Vintage’ it might help.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
yes please to the vintage rework!!xx
Hi Faith,
Thanks for the postcard and your mail telling me about this site.
I absolutely agree with you about sewing. I too learned to sew from my mum because we lived in out of the way places and there were no clothes shops!
My mother is the same age as yours, and yes, she did the parachute silk thing and reworking coats.She also had beautiful dance dresses from our days in the Middle East made by wonderfully skilled tailors and lovely fabrics, no synthetics in sight. I’d give anything to get my hands on them now…
Recently, a friend has been saying how she wished she could teach her thirteen year old daughter to sew. Emily Rose is quite an individual and wants clothes that she can’t find in the local boutiques - she does not always want what is in fashion, but something she can see in her mind’s eye!Maybe one day she’ll come and make her own nuno skirt with me!
Take care!
Julie
Hi Faith,
What you’ve written here is so pertinent to now and my own circumstances as well. Fascinated to read about your mother. I am a little older than you, but my mother sewed and recycled her clothes into new ones for us children. My aunt who worked in workshop at Norman Hartnell honed my dressmaking skills and I was making ballgowns, ect for other aunts at age 11 in spare time. I went into teaching, art history, then museum work (mum did not approve of doing things with your hands as a proper career) but sewing was kept up too. At long, long last, I went to art school in my forties and have taught textiles to degree level since then. My aunt has just died and left me loads of vintage fabrics which are fantastic. I am working on a way to now use this in new work about womens dress and how its made traditionally - these skills wasn’t considered at art school to be very important at all, but I just love them - how to use it though without sinking into just cute nostalgia!? Your felt works look wonderful, I will come and see them something hopefully. Keep up the good work. Kind regards, Trisha