recycling – A recycled lifestyle…

“Oh, I can’t sew…

May 31, 2024thriftwizard1 Comment

My teacher told me I have two left hands”… Madam, you are around 70 now; that long-gone teacher has been sitting inside your head, telling you you’re useless, there’s no use even trying, for over 60 years… Obviously, I can’t say that! But I can, and do, think it, all too often. Some of my teachers did that to me, too, though ultimately it didn’t stick. (Which is probably why I was beyond furious when my eldest’s DT teacher slapped him down for daring to think outside the box and come up with a entirely-workable alternative to the standard “tumbling acrobat” project. Luckily it doesn’t seem to have blighted his creativity, as has been done to so many children over the years.) Why do we so easily believe it, and as parents, put up with it?

I’ve just done another one of those events where we are basically challenging people to think about how they choose their clothes, and what effect their choices will have on the world our descendants will have to live in. Last year, I did really well at the same event; lots of people were open-minded, willing and able to access their innate creativity. But this year, many attendees just seemed to want to buy the handmade/re-made/upcycled look, so although I was delighted to sell a few handmade trinkets, most of my lovely vintage fabrics remained on the stall. It was still well worth my while, and a delight to be trading alongside so many talented makers & menders, but ultimately a little discouraging, in the sense that so many people don’t seem to see any point even trying to make, mend or re-make their own garments no matter how much they love them, or originally paid for them. A button missing, a hem coming down, and it’s off to the Tip or the ragman, via the charity shop – who do not mend things, or put anything damaged out for sale.

I clearly hit a nerve with one or two, who reacted as if I’d suggested they became a slave for a day; how did we come to associate creativity – sewing, cooking, gardening, for example – with drudgery? From my point of view, making stuff is a delight, something I’m very lucky to have time to indulge in, even if I can’t afford brand new equipment or supplies. (That said, by now, I simply wouldn’t want to – I prefer to work with things that have had a previous “life” and clearly come with stories attached.) But I can understand how frustrating it can be for some, if they try and continually fail at whatever they wanted to do; at least they did try. Because normally, if you don’t do well at something on the first try, you should try, try and try again, as someone who appreciated spiders as much as I do once said. None of us will be masters the first time we try something; making mistakes is how we learn. Things get easier; you learn tips & tricks, you talk to people ahead of you on that path and learn from them. You try things out (easiest if you haven’t spent a fortune on supplies) and go with what works, remembering what doesn’t, and working out why.

Sadly people tell me they just don’t have the time. I sigh for them and agree, but can’t help thinking of a young Eastern European single Mum I’ve come across, who makes & sells stunning macramé items in the evenings, after she’s finished work, cooked the supper, and her child has gone to bed. She learnt to do this from YouTube videos on her phone, initially using garden string. She just tried, with whatever came to hand, persevered, & succeeded. It won’t make her a fortune, she’ll probably never be able to ditch the day job, but she does make useful (quite possibly essential) pocket-money from doing something she enjoys and her customers genuinely appreciate. And no-one would have blamed her for just sitting down & watching TV…

Making & mending with textiles, yarns & fibres is not for everyone, I do know. But I also feel that there’s a vast tranche of people out there who could, and would, if only they had the confidence to try, and it wasn’t so very much easier not to…

Weaving new from old…

May 14, 2024thriftwizardLeave a comment

Woven mostly during a Dorset Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers workshop with the lovely Riita Sinkonnen-Davies, my “Weaving New from Old” project was woven on a little old Dryad 4-shaft loom, still with metal heddles and tied together with various rather random bits of string.

(Spot the error where one shaft had dropped…)

The fabrics I chose were all old duvet covers, three of them pure cotton but the other two 50/50 polycotton. I wasn’t sure that the rainforest print, with the orange/turquoise/green colours, would work with the dominant pinks & purples of the other fabrics, but in the event, it brought the mix alive. I’d intended to make a simple table runner, something we didn’t have & would use.

Although I warped the loom as I would my knitters loom, by running round the dining table and a tucked-in carver chair, it somehow ended up several inches longer than the 6′ table! So I decided to cut it & use two thirds for the table runner (now about 4′ long) and one third to make a bag; I can always use another bag. The table runner is already in use, although I have yet to back it. Every mealtime I spot another mistake, but I love it anyway. As do the cats, needless to say… On the bag, I have “laced” in the row where one of the shafts had fallen out of play, hence only half of the warps are there; it will get hard use carrying various projects around, and that would form a weak point, so I decided to lace it down in a different colour to the two warp yarns. (I’ve used the same colour (blue) to stitch the handle on.) Once the table runner has a backing, I will probably stitch a pattern quilting-style over the weave to stabilise the other place where this had happened, and a few places where the shuttle had skipped a warp – it’s likely I was nattering, not concentrating!

The bag is lined with some old canvas that I’d rescued, probably originally part of an outdoor cushion cover, thinking just to stitch a tough bag from that. There is, of course, a pocket inside. The handle is finger-woven (or braided?) from the duvet fabrics, ripped in 2″ strips as I would for a twined-weave project. The “fastening” is finger-woven from narrow strips left over from the workshop, and I’ve used an old mother-of-pearl bead from a broken pair of ear-rings, secured by a little ribbon rose found by my sewing machine. These were fastened on with old button thread, even though it’s not the best colour; my aim was to use what I already had rather than buy new, which seemed most appropriate.

I’m very happy with the results, however many blunders I made and however dubious my choice of colours, and can’t wait to tackle more projects – or to find a bigger loom (again) now that we have a little more space…

Poppy & Jingles appreciating my efforts, and wondering if it’s teatime yet…

New challenges!

February 25, 2024February 25, 2024thriftwizardLeave a comment

A couple of days ago, at the recycling warehouse, they had a number of large (2.5m x 1.45m) !KEA pure linen curtains in a mustardy brown colour; I paid 50p each for five of them. Four were pretty much pristine & went straight off the next morning with a re-enactor friend (“A perfect medieval colour! This stuff is about £27 a metre new!”) But the fifth has some biro marks in the centre, which haven’t washed out. So I’m making myself a Japanese-style cross-over apron from it, with BIG pockets, decorated with some shibori I did on a course last year that’s been waiting for the right project.

Needless to say, there’s a reason why I’ve never done anything much with linen before; it’s tricksy stuff. Quite open-woven, with tendency to fray like mad, and it creases in seconds unless starched, which would be a bit OTT for a working apron. (But I know that with use, it softens & drapes like almost no other fabric woven from natural fibres does. And under the right circumstances, it can outlast entire dynasties – see the pleated linen dress/smock in the Petrie Museum.) I was also not sure that I’d really got my head around how the aprons actually work, so I drew up a pattern on brown wrapping paper & made up a rough toile from an old curtain lining that was just hanging around in the sewing room (actually the spare bedroom) waiting for something useful to do. The various “patterns” & instructions garnered from other makers’ blogs & Y0utube do actually work & make sense, it’s just I can’t always “see” things in 3D straight off.

Anyhoo, after idiotically forgetting to cut the “pattern” on the fold, deciding to overlock the edges & accidental centre seam for saftey’s sake and sticking pins into myself several times trying to place the pockets to best effect, I did have a wearable apron. But I wasn’t completely happy with the way that it hangs… partly down to my own shape, but partly because there’s not quite enough “body” to the fabric.

So I thought, should I have lined it? Which would be a considerable faff, making up a lining… hang on, where’s that toile? Needless to say, even adding in a pre-made lining isn’t going to be that easy… put that on hold for now.

Luckily there was plenty of curtain left to cut out another one. I removed the shibori pocket from the first effort & adjusted the “pattern” a bit; made it a little longer & a bit narrower over the shoulders. Then fetched my 505 spray – this is a light spray-on glue, much loved by quilters for stabilising layers while you work – and smoothed the rest of the old curtain lining onto the linen, then cut it out, remembering to cut on the fold this time. I decided to leave the pockets on the first iteration and cut out some more from the left-over layered bits. Hemming the bits just seemed far too much like hard work, so I edged them with some herringbone tape left over from another project. I also stitched a few lines around the neck & straps, to keep the layers reasonably well together, knowing the pockets would sort out the lower half. Some beads & stitches found their way onto the shibori pocket, too.

So, here’s my new work apron:

Which looks better on than hanging, but my assistant is off working on her knitting machine… So now, of course, I need to get that toile stitched into the first iteration, and I’ll have a fine work apron for my second allotment…

Second allotment? Yes, a half-plot has come free on the site just up the road from our home. It’s small but enchanting; it was a flat-dweller’s garden previously. There are some beautiful things there & I’ll try to keep as many of those as I can, although some are too big & hungry to continue grow alongside food plants and others will need to be moved into little areas set aside for pollinators. I’ll struggle to fit everything I want to grow in, BUT it has a wonderful half-greenhouse/half-shed that will allow me to grow far more of the tomatoes & chillis that we love, and it’s only a moment’s walk from our house. The other plot is a good mile away, which means driving if I have things to carry, and a twenty-minute walk each way when I don’t. Not to mention the constant onslaught of very determined agricultural weeds (brambles, blackthorn suckers, nettles, creeping buttercup) and pests (rats & rabbits, mostly) from the field boundary & ditch along the long edge. Also not mentioning my raspberries, which have gone feral & spread like a (very tasty) plague… So although I will miss that space, and have some crops in the ground (garlic, onions, beans) & perennial plants over there that I will miss, I will gradually wind that one down & eventually hand it over to someone with more grit!

New challenge!

Although I have yet to sign the lease & pay the rent, some of that rosemary will be flavouring our dinner tonight…

2024 – What will it bring?

December 31, 2023December 31, 2023thriftwizardLeave a comment

So, we’ve reached the turning of the year once more. 2023 was an odd one for us… I do feel we’re on the cusp of great changes that have been brewing for a long time, but are not quite there yet. (Possibly not unrelated to the number of inhabitants of this house steadily falling into the normal range?!) Hoping for a wonder-filled, marvellous & brilliant year, for us and for all my family & friends, and for all of you out there too!

There were some wonderful things to celebrate, such as DS1 marrying his lovely fiancée, but towards the end of the year we lost the use of both of our vehicles at the same time; my beloved van had developed an intractable fault which would have cost me the best part of £1K to get sorted. I’d already faced the fact that I needed a vehicle that did considerably more MPG with my 97 y.o. mother sliding gracefully downhill 42 miles away, so it was sold on. Simultaneously, my Other Half’s 16 y.o. Citroen suddenly “died” because of little rusty shreds mangling the gearbox, having just cost us £500 in new tyres and £400+ in EGR valve replacement. The secondhand car market has evidently gone insane, apparently because of supply chain difficulties, and finding a suitable, affordable replacement took weeks because everyone else was also looking for a vehicle that’s adaptable, economical to run and has a big boot, just like us! Cars were being sold online within hours of being listed, long before we could go to see & test-drive them. Can’t help feeling that people are prepared to take an awful lot on trust now…

We were lucky enough to have the use of DD1’s car as she & her partner are off travelling in South & Central America for a couple of months; it would have been an even more expensive nightmare otherwise as we’d have been limited to the local garages, in a very prosperous area where 10K might buy you a 10 y.o. little runabout. We also discovered that at 65, the “finance” offers are no longer as easily-available as they previously were, despite the fact we’re still working, fit & healthy. But we did find a reasonably-priced, reasonably economical vehicle with a reasonably big boot in the end.

At the same time, we found that the back had essentially fallen off one of the two sheds that I’d been keeping some of my less-constantly-relevant stock (and a few other items, like DD1’s 8-shaft sample loom that’s not in use but hasn’t sold) in. Rain and leaves had been pouring in through the gap, for weeks if not months. Quite a lot of stuff had to go straight to the tip, but I was able to rescue some of it. I would normally have taken most of that to the Scrapstore, but I had no transport, and they have had to close until mid-January anyway because of a problem with their building. So I offered it on Freegle straight away, and most of it was collected very quickly, but a few of the better bits have added to the chaos in my sewing room.

The last few weeks I’ve been making coiled-rope baskets, using up scraps & following YouTube tutorials. They are very easy, given a sewing machine with a decent zig-zag, some cotton washing line and lots of scraps, which I certainly do have, and the process is strangely addictive! They make great presents & look good enough that I might even be able to sell a few. It’s not doing much to reduce the nightmare muddle of my sewing room, though. I’ve finally realised that I need to get rid of the day-bed in there, which takes up a whole lot of space that could be far better used for a cutting table/space to keep the overlocker out on. A sturdy old gate-leg table would work very well & I suspect I can find one of those locally for pennies, as it doesn’t need to look good, just be functional; I hope I’ll be able to fit one into my “new” car! And find a good home for the day-bed, which has been used just once in the years that we’ve owned it.

One of Pembrokeshire’s many beautiful beaches…

DD2 & I enjoyed a week in May and another in October house- & pet-sitting for our eldest in glorious Pembrokeshire, before the van started to play up so badly. The charity shops of Haverfordwest proved to be a very fertile hunting ground for materials for “upcycling” - which reminds me, I have far too many projects lined up already; did I mention the mess? – though I did make a couple of rugs whilst there. One in twined-weave (which now lives there) & the other giant-crocheted for a small-but-absorbent mat for our shower room.

It’s not been such a bad year at the allotment – assorted beans especially did well! – or in the garden; preserving & fermenting the results has kept me well busy.

The freezer is still full-to-bursting, even after feeding the hordes over Christmas. So a frugal January is indicated on the grocery front! And one of my main resolutions for this coming year, apart from de-cluttering, and being a little more regular with the blog posts, is to dive further into the marvellous art of fermentation; amongst this year’s successes have been a tasty Salsa Verde, using the tomatillos in the picture above, grown from a packet of “free” seeds from a magazine, and Tepache, a delicious zingy drink made using two 50p pineapples from the market.

Wishing you all all the very best for 2024 – because we’re worth it!

The Great Shirt Project, continued…

September 23, 2022thriftwizard2 Comments

Suddenly I seem to have some time to myself again. I could, maybe even should, spend it catching up with 30-odd years of neglected housework. Or there again, I could do something creative…

Creativity wins hands down! I went down to the recycling warehouse, thinking I quite fancied making a Japanese-style padded jacket out of old shirts, in the spirit of make-do-and-mend (see also my “Great Shirt Project“) to keep me warm around the house this winter, as the heating will only be on for a short time each morning & evening to keep the house from becoming damp, thanks to the enormous rise in fuel costs. I was rootling through the bins full of discarded clothing when a piece of red chintz quite literally bit me; it was an old curtain pelmet, complete with tacks still in place, as my poor scratched hand can testify. Underneath it I found another piece of pelmet, and two cut-off curtain ends, each about 18″/45cm by 6’/180cm. These had clearly been part of beautifully-hand-made and very expensive interlined curtains, probably in the 1970s; the cotton “bump” interlining was exactly what I needed for my jacket padding. But the chintz also spoke to me, and has ended up being the jacket lining & details, such as the cuffs, belt (I know, not in the original!) and pockets.

It wasn’t difficult to make; there’s no tailoring involved. I kind of followed the “Hanten Jacket” pattern from Susan Briscoe’s inspiring The Book Of Boro, but the cotton bump was lightly stitched into the curtain ends & pelmets, so I left it that way and just stitched the pieced-shirt outer onto it. The thread came from my existing stash. Flattering it isn’t, and it’s a bit big for me, but warm it most certainly is & I’ll be very happy to wear it around the place, at the cost of something around £3; 50p each for 5 shirts and another 50p for the curtain bits, and there are still plenty of oddments to use up. Now I know it’s not hard, I’m planning at least one more, from an old linen curtain, a cotton duvet cover for the lining, and a lightweight blanket as padding, which I’d picked up intending to sell on, before I noticed the stained fringe. I could just have cut that off & sold it anyway, but it’ll make great padding that I’d otherwise have to pay for!

The finished article, made entirely from “thrifted” bits for very little money!

Now I’ve started, there are at least 20 more ideas for creative recycling projects jostling for space in my head. Not to mention other simple ways to add to our comfort this winter, with fuel prices through the roof. Though we do now have double-glazing, some of our curtains aren’t lined; now there’s another use for redundant sheets and duvet covers! So the poor neglected house may get a look-in and a spruce-up too. Watch this space…

Sometimes, it just won’t do…

March 18, 2022thriftwizardLeave a comment

Well, spot the sometimes-blogger who completely lost her blogging mojo… I don’t know why , I just felt that I didn’t have anything interesting to say. Or, for that matter, do… But having just annoyed myself intensely, please forgive me if I give myself an online talking-to!

So I decided to make a rag rug for our eldest son and his lovely partner, who are about to move into their own first-bought home. I know that they will be choosing their furniture & decor carefully, and of course it’s hard to gauge what might “fit” until you can see how their plans are working out – and if they’re anything like us, things don’t so much go according to the masterplan as just fall into place. They’ll do… I thought I’d just go along with something completely practical, which can be used anywhere – a bathmat, a door mat, a sleeping mat for their adorable dachshund, a boot-liner for the car. There was already a warp on the loom; I’d intended to make a mat for the back seat of my van, but kind of lost my way over winter with that as well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the warp was made from leftover bits of an old sheet that had been cut into strips for a completely different project, several years ago.

I should have known that a cut warp was never going to be as satisfactory as a torn warp for a twined-weave project; it hadn’t been cut completely straight on the “grain”, so the warp was constantly “shedding” threads, which stick up in the finished weaving. And enough came away as I went along that I became slightly anxious that it wouldn’t be as strong in the middle as it needs to be, to take the ferocious tension. Luckily – it sufficed.

The weft strips were a few bits of my husband’s old, torn jeans, an old, frayed turquoise seersucker tablecloth and two-and-a-half reclaimed duvet covers from the recycling warehouse. Total expenditure, £2; 50p each for the 4 bought items, with half of one duvet cover and a few strips left over.

So they picked up the keys today. And I really wanted there to be a parcel for them on the doorstep, so I carried on “over, under, twist!”-ing ’til late at night on Tuesday. I was aware I’d made a bit of an error at one point, but thought, it’s never going to be completely symmetrical, it’s in the nature of the beast to be a little bit chaotic – it’s a rag-rug, it’ll do. So I carried on.

I came down on Wednesday morning, took one look, and oh my goodness – NO!!! It would NOT do. The error shrieked and glared at me; I knew I’d have to undo half of what I’d done the evening before and put it right. If it was anywhere in my sight, the wrongness would just leap out at me, even though I’m no perfectionist. So I spent a merry couple of hours twisting backwards.

No, no, no, no, no! 4+ rows of turquoise where 3 would be *enough*…7 rows+ to unpick, half-done when pictured.

The moral of this story being – STOP when you’re tired, and start making mistakes! I have known this for many years – go off & do something else, sleep on it, come back to your project when you’re refreshed and not before! But once again, I carried on long past the point where I should have stopped… Despite the setback, I still got it finished and posted in time, and it arrived today – the day they picked up the keys for their own first lovely home. Phew…

Just asking – has anyone else out there struggled to get going with projects lately? In the unforgettable words of a dear friend – are you feeling, like I was, somewhat oomph-lacking?

The Great Shirt Project strikes again…

August 17, 2021August 18, 2021thriftwizard1 Comment

For several years now, I’ve been working on a one-woman challenge: to find as many uses for old shirts as I can! Every quilter knows there’s a whole lot of good, still-useful fabric in a decent gent’s shirt, often in lovely colours and nicely understated patterns, and so many of them just get chucked away when something frays, or a button falls off, or the owner gets larger or just goes off that colour. I’ve been paying 50p for superb quality cotton or linen shirts down at the recycler’s warehouse-shop, chopping them up and using the fabric in little quilts, and weaving the side-seams into bags and rugs, and making hanging “pockets”, needle books, mending kits and laptop covers, to name just a few of the ideas that have occurred to me. A few of the resulting items have even been sold.

Yesterday I experimented with some cuffs; I’ve been steadily selling lavender hearts made from the embroidered bits of old stained table linen, but they are delightfully feminine when all’s said & done. I wanted to make something that a guy would be happy to hang in his wardrobe to make his clothes smell fresh & deter moths, too. So now I’ve invented the Lavender Cuff! Time will tell whether anyone will ever actually buy one, but it’s got to be worth a try…

But the thing that I really, really wanted to make was a hat. It struck me some time ago that the stiffened bits of a formal shirt, i.e. the collars and cuffs, would be ideal for making a hat, if I could just get them joined together somehow. But before I had my big Pfaff machine serviced, all my attempts came to nothing; I broke a number of needles and wrecked several collars trying. It could always have been done by hand, but that might have taken rather a long time, so it didn’t happen.

Anyway, I tried again yesterday, and to my delight & surprise, I succeeded. The machine ran perfectly, I squared the collars & cuffs off to make even joins, and found an elegantly simple pattern to try (pattern & instructions here) and – it worked! I am now the proud possessor of a shirt-collar-and-cuff hat… This one’s a bit big; I made the bigger size because lots of hats feel too tight for me, so there’s another, slightly smaller, version in the making, but I’m actually really rather proud of it and will certainly wear it!

Fast forward…

July 15, 2021July 15, 2021thriftwizardLeave a comment

… to July, and any day now I’ll be a Grandma! A little quilt has duly been produced:

I even got to use some of my tie-dyed fabric on the back. All the fabric is reclaimed, rightly or wrongly.

They have a night-sky theme going on in the nursery so the shapes & colours were chosen to fit in with that; they look darker in the pictures than they actually are, thanks to the seemingly never-ending gloom in June. It’s not meant to be an heirloom but a totally practical, wash & wear everyday item. There are a few touches that I hope will please the little man; some chenilled seams to intrigue little fingers, and it’s bound with satin ribbon, remembering how much his father loved labels and other smooth textiles as a baby & small child. That and some of the thread – I ran out! – are the only things bought new.

In the meantime, our house has filled up with stuff again; we had a massive last-minute panic to empty my mother’s bungalow. It had sold previously, but the chain collapsed at the last minute and the sale fell through. The estate agents marketing it asked us to leave her stuff there, as it’s easier to sell a home that looks lived in. But as the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday tottered towards its end, we suddenly got a really good offer for it, provided the sale could go through within a week. Legally it was entirely possible; the new buyer didn’t need a mortgage and the paperwork was all ready to roll, but it was still full of a lifetime’s possessions; you can’t fit that much into her room at the care home, lovely though it is! So some of those possessions have ended up here with us; some will be sold, a few bits used (proper glass lemon squeezies! Oh yes!) but others I will have to make space for until various offspring have homes of their own to house them in. And yes, the lawyers pulled it off and the sale went through a day early.

The weird weather has left me with another space problem; things that should have come out by now over at the allotment are still in the ground, only just starting to go over. So I have several sets of plants ready to go into the ground, but no ground to put them in! And my “first early” potatoes & my maincrops are clearly all going to be ready at the same time. Needless to say, the weeds have galloped away; one minute they were tiny, hardly worth hoeing off, then it rained for weeks and now they are thigh-high. Some serious work called for over there! But some actual potential crops are thriving; I planted Greek Gigantes beans for the first time, and despite the deluge they seem very happy & are racing up their wigwam.

I’m sure there was something serious I wanted to witter on about, but I’ve entirely forgotten what it was, thanks to finding most of a treasure at the recycling warehouse earlier this week. A 1979 Rappard Wee Peggy spinning wheel, originally from New Zealand, but alas, she’s missing her flyer, whorl & bobbins. So that will be a Quest for me over the next few months; I either need to track some “orphan” parts down, or find something that can substitute for them. Without them, sadly she’s just expensive firewood; with them, she’s a beautiful and genuinely useful tool.

So now I’m wondering how to gently tell the house clearance people that sometimes, bizarre-looking bits of wood & metal with odd protrusions, often stashed in baskets of brittle, age-old, moth-eaten fluff, are actually vital parts of something. And remembering the lady who found one merrily chucking parts of a loom into a skip, because he couldn’t work out how this “bookcase” fitted together…

Bizarre!

January 24, 2021February 8, 2021thriftwizard3 Comments

How strange! I feel as if a beloved friend has just left us… the time had come to replace my Mac Mini. We’d had it for over 10 years and it had served us well; it’s been replaced with an updated version as that’s what does the things I need from a personal computer the best & fits the space available. It had become slower & slower over the last few months, and every now & then the fan would kick in audibly as it struggled; I suspect it had got very dusty inside. I opted to go for the trade-in option, as that means that anything that’s still usable inside the box will get re-used, and the bits that aren’t will be recycled rather than just sitting in a cupboard until I got round to chucking it out.

So I did the Mac-to-Mac transfer, which wasn’t as horrendous or time-consuming as I thought it might be, though there were one or two little blips. But Apple Support were great & smoothed it all out for me, and the New Mac Mini was up & running easily a couple of days ago. Yesterday I managed to track down all the bits of data that had wandered off to other folders, so today was “Wipe Mac-Mini-1” day. I followed the instructions on the Apple website to prepare it for returning to Apple, but as it came to clicking the “Erase Disk” option I felt a real pang of sorrow!

It’s very strange; I know I’ll feel the same when my beloved Mazda Bongo finally trundles off to the great scrapheap in the sky. Or if my 1909 Jones Medium treadled sewing machine jammed irreparably, something having broken inside. My head knows perfectly well that they’re just machines; they don’t have personalities, they’re not my “friends” no matter how useful they are, but somehow my heart “knows” otherwise. And I suspect that that’s one reason why I feel I have to do what I do; I see perfectly good old tools, furniture or books sitting in a skip or at an auction and somehow they seem to be begging, “rescue me!” But that does rather lead to an excessively cluttered home, despite my efforts to re-home stuff profitably.

I suppose the answer is, stay away from skips, scrapheaps and auctions. But please tell me I’m not alone, and that other people out there do sometimes feel the same, and that some of the good old stuff that’s tossed away in our wasteful society will also be rescued – just not always by me…

*My beloved “rescued-via-Ebay-for-£2.50” Jones Medium treadle, still very much in use!*

Why wouldn’t you…?

August 8, 2016thriftwizard2 Comments

It was crumpled up inside a plastic bin-liner at the market on Saturday, but something about it caught my eye… on closer inspection, it was part of a quilt. And looking closer still, probably part of a painstakingly hand-made quilt; the only machine-stitches I’ve been able to find were those joining the backing piece. It cost me part of £3, along with a number of other items.

At some point, someone has hacked a fair bit of it off, hopefully to do something intelligent with; I think it was probably king-size to start with and is now about 4′ x 6′; the pattern has been interrupted both lengthways and widthways. They’d left one edge with the original binding, zig-zagged roughly down another, but left the last two raw. An interrupted project, from an unwanted gift, maybe? At first I thought it was probably one of the lovely Marks & Spencers’ Indian-made quilts, but when I realised that the piecing was all hand-stitched as well as the quilting, I decided that hand-made was more likely.

rescuequilt2

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I knew I’d have some suitable plain fabric to make a quick American-style binding with, in a not-unsympathetic colour. So I bought it, and told the stallholder (whose wife knows her quilts & exactly what they might earn them) what I was planning to do with it. As I walked away I couldn’t help overhearing, sotto-voce, “But why would you…?”

Why wouldn’t I?! If I were making a quilt (well, I usually am!) it wouldn’t be my first choice of colours or styles. Far too much like hard work! But the colours fit into my draughty little living room like a hand into a glove. Binding’s not hard, and doesn’t take long; it was done by Sunday evening, sitting outside in the sunshine, fitted around other everyday tasks. And I absolutely respect the work and the skill that’s gone into this one, even if it’s just a remnant of what it once was.

I love being surrounded by, and using, lovely things that have been made with skill, care and love, which have often survived the tests of time. And I love “rescuing” things that others consider beyond consideration. Sometimes I use them in “upcycling” projects, sometimes I sell them on, but sometimes they just make themselves at home here…

oldtrim — Rescued from an old, stained linen petticoat…