Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Though the claith were bad, blythly may we niffer

A load of clothToday I have been sorting out my Cloth Box, attempting to reduce the contents which is spilling out the top. This was a horrible task. The trouble with my Cloth Box is that
  • Every time an item of clothing or soft furnishings becomes unwearably knackered, I put that on one side with a view to using the fabric later on.
  • Every time I make something, I save the remnants because they're bound to be useful at some later date.
  • Meanwhile, I keep seeing lovely bits of fabric and thinking up weird and wonderful projects - especially when I have a baby nephew; there are outfits I think he'll like, Wendy Houses and wigwams, yet more soft toys. But sometimes I just buy stuff because it's cheap; I still have no idea what I'm going to do with all that PVC.
And once the pattern is established, it becomes impossible to throw good fabric away, even a two inch square scrap of good fabric which will be no use to anyone (but it might, it might; it could patch up a hole in... something... sometime). Apart from the fact that I am making very slow progress with my sewing projects on account of the fact that I am yet to learn how to use a sewing machine.

And if I wasn't having a frustrating enough time as it was, I moved awkwardly such that I ripped a hole in the skirt I was wearing, a skirt I had made, a skirt that had taken hours and hours and hours...

8 comments:

Lady Bracknell said...

Lady Bracknell will now have that Steeleye Span song on auto-repeat in her head for the forseeable future...

Anonymous said...

"O'er the bum o'Geordie!"

Couldn't you make patchwork projects, Goldfish? I am the proud inheritor of about a hundred (all right, four) patchwork quilts all in pristine condition because everyone these days uses duvets.

But I gather they use a lot of fabrics.

Maggie said...

As a fabric junkie I'm horribly tempted to hang on to all odd bits too... I've got some of that leopardskin faux fur I see in your photo, one of these days I'm going to make a chair cover from it (got quite a lot!). We have a place in Liverpool called Abakan, sells fabric by weight. Horribly tempting place! But useful for sheeting, as well as other fabrics, and great if you want to make fancy dress for kids.

Mary said...

Well, you could always do the charitable thing and offer the scraps that really are scraps to a school for "art" projects. That way they haven't been binned, but aren't cluttering up your space.

Or maybe make a few patches in various sizes, and then get rid of the rest of the fabric, knowing that you have patches should you ever need them.

Anonymous said...

Fabric is the only thing I collect. Not bits and pieces though, only large curtain remnants that I MIGHT use some day. The fabric is the last hold-out from my collecting days. I don't believe in it anymore but I just can't let go of some of the fabric. I might make new pillows out of it, I might make curtains, I might cover a chair. What I would like is to have enough faith in my resources and the universe to know that if I need to make something, the right fabric will show up. But I don't have that faith, so I have a big box of fabric instead....

The Goldfish said...

Apologies to her Ladyship and everyone else who has had that song (my favourite Steleye Span) in their head since.

Trouble with patchwork Charles is that you can't combine any old fabric, and you do need regular shapes.

Mary's suggestion of schools is a good on. Will investigate that.

Maggie - my leopard print is left over from covering some cushions in my old bedroom back at my folks house, when I was asserting my adolescent identity - so that's been hanging round a good eight or nine years!

Anna, much empathy. :-)

Anonymous said...

Do you need regular shapes? My mother used to make what I believe is known as "crazy patchwork" which was all sorts of random shapes sewn onto a backgoround, such as an old sheet.

Thus you got to recylcel two items at once!

Anonymous said...

PS sorry about spelling. I really must read what I am writing.