Saturday 11 April 2009

Make do and mend

I am rummaging through one of three big boxes and one cupboard we keep stuffed with fabric offcuts and old clothes.

I'd like to say this is because I am wary of spending huge amounts of money on kid's clothes, but it isn't. I did that last week.

No. This is because I did that last week. I took Shark to Gap and stocked her up with clothes for an impending clothes wearing ordeal. Today I ask her naively if she'd actually like to wear any of those expensive and delightful items we bought at great cost to our souls last week at Gap. She considers this for a moment, puts her head on one side, pulls up her top lip and says slowly Well actually mummy, like she's going to explain exactly why she cannot wear any of these items and why I will spend the rest of my days trying to persuade Squirrel and Tiger to like blue.

Stop right there I command. Tell me no more because I want to die in ignorance of what you are about to say.

Then I drag out of the cupboard an old blue cotton Laura Ashley dress, Shark's real favourite, one she wore and wore and wore until I had to hide it away where she should never find it. This dress was so thin in parts that your breath and this fabric take up the same air space.

Then I locked the door and I hacked away at this dress with scissors and needles. Two hours later I presented Shark with a skirt of this very same material gathered and trimmed, and she is now wearing that in such complete happiness and joy that I have got back to the cupboard and dragged out an old shirt and six more dresses.

And the rest of my day is spent right here.

3 comments:

Mamma Po said...

Wow. That is beyond awesome.

I also have a box like that - all the clothes I can't bear to throw out because they just need taking up here or sewing a patch there. But although stuff keeps on going into this black hole, nothing has yet emerged. In a wearable state anyway.

Nevertheless, I live in hope that one day (perhaps when my kids are either at school or occupied for long enough for me to have a moment to dust the sewing machine off), I too will become Ms Make-Do-&-Mend. This is my ultimate Domestic Goddess fantasy, just ahead of baking fresh muffins for breakfast every day (not just at Christmas). Well I can dream...

Grit said...

mamma po! not awesome, no! desperate! because if i do not act, i will have a naked shark patrolling the streets. and as for the freshly baked muffins...

Irene said...

You are one hell of an awesome woman. Were you born this talented?