GOSH, DARN IT...

Helen Tidy reaches for her needles to salvage holey clothes

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Carrying on with the spirit of the 1940s I felt descend last month, I wanted to take a look at making my clothes last a little longer. This is not just a thing for these strange times, even though popping out to buy replacements is currently more than a little challenging. No, rather it is something that I have been pondering for a while. My mother was a whizz with a needle when I was growing up and, inevitably, this extended to mending things. Clothes were made with this in mind so it was not unusual for me to have dresses and skirts with rows and rows of braid or rik rak (remember that?) that had been applied to hide marks from turned down hems.

Jeans were regularly patched and hemlines regularly extended. Her pièce de résistance, however, was her darning. Rather than using darning thread, any leftover yarn was used and I have vivid childhood memories of socks mended with double knit that were lumpy and uncomfortable, in some cases causing blisters. But the embroidered faces mum would add to her finished work almost made up for this. Slipping off your shoes with friends became an occasion of joy as shrieks of laughter would inevitably ensue. I’m not sure my Dad was quite as happy about this happening to his socks as the rest of us were but as he was generally not given to removing his shoes in public, it probably didn’t cause him many problems.