Let's Talk About..... Karina
Karina is unashamedly bold and very pink. Such an uplifting colour, and she needed some fabric equally bold to compliment the pinkness.
This jolly fabric comes from a pair of trousers I bought the summer after our first child, Charlotte, was born, so that would make it 1990. My waistline wasn’t quite what it was, so trousers with an elasticated waist felt like the way to go. They had side pockets and tapered to the ankle.
I’ve been trying to remember who made them. I cut them up ages ago, to add to the pile, so haven’t seen a label for a long time. They may possibly be Clothkits. Clothkits were a company, first started towards the end of the 60’s, and had the ingenious idea of printing the sewing pattern onto the fabric and selling it as a kit for the home dressmaker to sew themselves. There were matching clothes for mum, children, and dolls, with naive drawings and pattern shapes on the fabric.
“Well these trousers don’t look like that” I hear you say. No, so after a quick internet search, I discovered that Clothkits were bought out and owned by Freeman’s Catalogues between the years 1988 and 1991, and sold ready made clothes. So that may well have solved my mystery.
Clothkits are still in business, in Chichester, Sussex, today, back selling what they do best before big business got hold of them.
Karina is no shrinking violet. Wearing her you will never get lost in a crowd. She is loud and proud.