Let's Talk About..... My Fabric

I’ve always had a life long affinity with fabric. I’m sure it all goes back to a dress my mother made for me when I was very young. She went to an evening class to make it whilst pregnant with my little brother, in 1962. It was a red and white check Viyella dress (a very fine woven wool) with short sleeves and a smocked front with a gathered skirt. I loved that dress and as it was such a palaver to make, my mother put an extra deep hem on it, so I wore it for years. I can still imagine the feel of it now, all these years later. My mother was not a natural sewer, but being the expected 1950’s housewife, she had a sewing kit, button box, and an electric Singer sewing machine, and gave it a good go.

As all sewers know, you always have left over fabric from your handmade projects, so we had the obligatory stash around the house, which proved very useful as I was able to use these scraps of fabric to make my pretend Sindy’s new outfits. And who didn’t, during the 1970’s, in their teenage years insert triangular fabric to boring jeans, transforming them into trendy flares, along with appliquéd hearts and flowers, to complete the look.

Sewing was the only thing I excelled at in school. I wasn’t even sporty like my 3 brothers, and I quickly learned that if I wanted new clothes I should make them myself, as my mother was much happier shopping in a fabric shop than a clothes shop. After all, as we lived near Leicester we had great choices. Leicester market had a wonderful array of fabric stalls, but if you fancied going a bit up market, there was Lewis’s, Rackham’s, and Fenwick’s with great fabric departments.

So it was a natural progression from my C.S.E. Grade 1 in Needlework, to study fashion design for 3 years at Loughborough Art College, learning how to draw, pattern cut and create designs. This left me with the ability to make clothes and curtains for friends, neighbours and family. And so my fabric collection grew, because as we know, there are always left overs.

I got a bit distracted along the way with learning to weave, spin and felt wool, but the biggest distraction of all was getting married and having 3 wonderful daughters.

Once you have a fabric collection, friends and family are always eager to pass on the contents of granny’s cupboards and aunty’s buttons etc, mainly because they can’t think what to do with it all. I am always happy to accept these gifts. Who could say No. I always say Yes, as you never know they might be useful one day.

Once our girls had grown up, I looked around me and realised the time had come to actually do something useful with my stash and repurpose it. I had a middle of the night thought, usually to be ignored, that I could embellish jackets that are looking for a new home, by reusing and repurposing my fabric, and encouraging a more sustainable fashion market.

So here we are a few months later, with a name and a website, which wouldn’t have been possible, with my lack of tech skills, without the very much needed help from my eldest daughter Charlie and her husband Chris. So a big shout out to them both.

My fabric collections are full of memories, not just from things I have made, but from my favourite clothes that I couldn’t get rid of after they no longer fitted me, or fashions changed. So I cut them up and added them to the pile(s). And I have other peoples memories tied into the fabric as well, with the bags and bags of material passed on to me over the years.