Dead T-Shirt Make Do and Mend

Here's a boy (number 2 in our family) in a boy's fleece. When I bought it this afternoon, though (1€50 special offer on fleeces at Veti Relais, the charity shop)...

it was a girl's fleece. Eew!

Double eew!

Thanks to a tiny T-shirt that Son 2 outgrew years ago, but which he'd begged me to keep because one day I might do something with it, he now has a fleece with his favourite glow-in-the-dark Puerto Rican frog on it again!

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I'm quite pleased with the results of an hour's blanket-stitching. His response when he saw his frog ride again? "Cool!"

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PS - DS allowed as it's Friday night, in case you were wondering about my relaxation of the 'no video games on week nights' rule!

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PPS I'm going to take my week's break now. I won't be looking at your blog or mine until next Friday, now. Have a lovely week, friends.

Which came first - the sock or the egg?

Well, in this case, I think it was clearly the egg! We have a chronology here in the picture - 2011 Marks and Spencer socks, 1970s flowered sewing basket, and pre-1950 French darning egg. The pack of otherwise super M&S mail-order socks included one that sprang a hole almost the moment Ben put it on. I was all for sending it back and complaining, but Ben thought it wasn't worth the trouble ("c'est pas la peine") and asked if the sock was at all mendable.

I thought I'd give it a go, as I'd mended a lot of sock seams in my time, and had 'sort-of' darned a few things, and had read instructions in both 'Make Do and Mend' and 'How Green are my Wellies?'

Picking the right darning wool for a sock which is red, pink and black, was no trouble at all, as I could only find white in my vintage darning wool 'collection'!

And it turned out all right. The proof of the darning was in the wearing - I said to Ben one evening: 'Have you found that sock I darned yet?' and he replied that he hadn't realised I'd done it. He took off his shoe to check which socks he'd been wearing all day and, lo and behold, he'd been comfortably walking around for the last 12 hours without realising he had a darned sock! So I'd say it worked.

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Thanks for your continued, much-valued comments. We are now on holiday, and the reduced timetable of the last few school days meant that Son 2 could pop in and out of school whenever he had a lesson, which meant we could also manage his painkillers and general exhaustion. My father has been discharged from hospital and the boys and I will be flying out to visit him on Tuesday! We are very grateful.

On my line...

On Flossie's washing line there is... A flutter of embroidered linens, carefully checked in advance by the dog.

On Flossie's washing line there was:

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a sadly battered peg bag, with lots of fond memories of school in England.

But since I put this pretty vintage peg bag in my blog shop, the terrible state of the peg bag on my own line has been niggling at me.

I gave it a good wash and a mend, and here it is in its mended glory!On Flossie's washing line there is:

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This giant, handmade, vintage peg, bought in Edinburgh - do you think it was made by a gypsy and sold at the door? I do hope so.

On Flossie's washing line there is:

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A glimpse of vintage leg, amongst the more practical day-to-day washing.

I washed these huge vintage French undershorts the other day.

They are party mind-boggling, and partly delightful!

The Good Life

Let's start with the Man of the Moment - Son 1, who chipped a bone and tore the cartilage in his ankle on their second day of sledging. He's being utterly noble about the whole thing, although this may not continue when he has to go back to school, on Thursday. He has watched a lot of films, read a lot of books (in that order, sadly), built a lot of models and played half a game of Trivial Pursuit with me. We were pretty even, with him using a mixture of adults' and childrens' cards! To be continued...

Now to the title - a number of you commented on Ben's plan to mend his ski-boots with the car tyre I found while out and about before Christmas.

On our snowed-in Sunday he took over one end of the living area - too much snow to work out of doors!He broke his second-hand saw cutting the tyre, but he got two pieces...and got the first heel shaped and fitted before going sledging, and then heading for the hospital! He tells me that everyone was wonderful at the hospital - Son 1's was not the first sledging accident they'd seen, by any means.Still on the Good Life theme, perhaps, I wanted to show you two of my best Christmas presents, both of which were thoughtfully given from someone else's collection, rather than bought. This is something worth considering!My mum gave me this beautiful jewellery bag, which I well remember admiring on her dressing table as a child. Inside was this string of beads, which she made up when bead shops became popular in the 1980s. Wasn't it a good choice? So very Floss.Then California Shelley, about whom I've written before, sent me a parcel to open on Christmas Day. A lot of Brits will probably recognise the pretty scene on this etching...... and I've been there! It's Clovelly, the north Devon seaside town with such a steep main street that donkeys are used to carry loads (and tourists) up and down it.This was such a thoughtful gift, and particularly special as we used to live in south Devon with my grandparents. Giving a present that hasn't been bought is something that we could probably do a lot more often.

Flowers, Cards and... Tyres?

I loved all the Pause in Advent posts this second week - thanks so much to everyone who is making the event so festive yet thought-provoking. However, I hardly had the time to comment on most of them, as time is doing that thing it does when you have children, jobs and Christmas is approaching!

I did pop out and spend (whisper it) a bit of money at the all-year Vide Grenier this weekend. Largely, I was looking for stock for the Troc and Broc Vintage Shop (lots of rhymes there!) but I did pick up a little something for myself...These fabric-covered boxes are such a feature of French vintage - they were made for everything from chocolates to handkerchiefs, and I think that this one with its little compartments and drawer was probably for hankies.I intend to use it for my lace collection, which recently got much larger and much better when my mother gave me her own collection!

It's going to fit in beautifully.Let's just enjoy another self-indulgent shot...And it goes very charmingly with my first fabric box, which I bought with birthday money in Edinburgh this year...

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I did buy a smaller second box (not pictured). Watch the blog shop for that one!Now, as for Christmas cards, we have tried to develop an Advent tradition which makes their arrival a bit more meaningful. When I find them in the post I pop the envelopes into this basket on the table. In the evening everyone takes it in turn to open them before we eat, and we remember the senders as we say thank you for our food. It all depends on how frantic everything gets as to how well this one works, but it's a nice idea...And finally, although less prettily, Ben has been on the look-out for a tyre for some thrifty Make Do and Mend, and today I found one for him by the bins on my morning cycle ride! It wasn't too hard to bring back on my bike...

He's going to try to use it to mend the heels on his favourite ski boots, which fit like gloves but have unfortunately crumbled away at the heel. I'll keep you posted on his progress!

101 Uses for a Dead T-shirt*

*The use of this title in no way endorses the tacky 1980s book 101 Uses of a Dead Cat, which I thought was tasteless and nasty, but did have a catchy title!

So, turning to the T-shirt problem, our boys have a wonderful collection of T-shirts from round the world, brought back by travelling members of the family or picked up in Charity Shops. When Son 1 grows out of a T-shirt it is snapped up enthusiastically by Son 2, but when a T-shirt gets too small, or too battered for him, we are reluctant to throw it away, or even to give it to a Charity Shop. Thus, we have got inventive over the years...The latest T-shirt to get a bit skimpy on him was one of his favourites, brought back from China by Granny and Grandpa. Anything with a dragon on was bound to be much loved. So while Son 2 did some Holiday Work, I got snipping and sewing...
...and converted it into a cushion for his bed...
... with which he is very pleased.
This was a T-shirt brought back by Uncle Mathew and Aunt Kate (that's Ben's brother - the real globe trotter of the family) when the boys were tiny. It soon wrinkled up in that way that embroidered T-shirts sometimes do, but Son 2, aged about 3, still would not relinquish it. In the end I cut out the embroidery and stretched it over a little frame I'd found.
Since then it has hung in their bedroom, and more recently in our bathroom, next to Son 1's photo of a similar location.
This is one we actually bought ourselves! Son 1 then Son 2 dropped chocolate on the white bits, but the picture remained intact....... and now sits next to our own photos of the same location.
We'll be going back to Carnac, an amazing prehistoric site in Brittany, in a few weeks' time.
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Other, more prosaic uses of old T-shirts in this house include cleaning cloths and dusters. Do you have any other suggestions?
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Advance warning - I am gathering together bits and pieces of French school ephemera (old and new) for a Giveaway for la Rentreé! More information to follow...

Vintage Stool Makeover

This stool dates from sometime after the Second World War, when one of Ben's family decided to cope with a shortage of materials by making a stool out of old crates. Ben's dad told us to use it as long as we wanted and then get rid of it, because it was no value to anyone.

But Emily loved him...

(Sorry, irrelevant quote, but we both loved this stool as soon as we saw it.)The time came, this summer, when I had a great place to put the stool but it looked too stained and grubby to live there (near the utility room door, if you're interested). I sanded it down quite hard, to make a decent surface, primed/undercoated it in about three coats of white, to stop the stain showing through, and then gave it two light coats of 'blue indigo' matte paint - I wanted it to be a bit shabby with perhaps a bit of white showing through, rather than a perfect gloss finish. I left all the chips on the edges - I love them, too.
Yesterday it was time to gather together any vintage ephemera I was willing to use for this project. These vintage tram tickets come from Naples, Malta and somewhere in Spain, I think. I love the way my mum found them in this box she picked up somewhere - a treasured souvenier of someone's latterday Grand Tour, I suppose. I only used the battered ones...
These photographic memorabilia came from one of the lovely Bethany Christian Trust shops in Edinburgh - they seem to have been the collection of someone called Rankin, which is a good, literary Edinburgh name!
I decided to use some of my Catholic collection - mainly First Communion cards. I don't feel much in tune with Marian imagary, or with the style of language used (ovbiously in French), so I took time to find some I liked.
Here was the modern (and oh so unenvironmentally friendly, I suspect) side to the project. It's a clever spray glue which allows you to reposition papers, although some of my tram tickets were too frail for that kind of treatment.
I then spent a happy half hour arranging papers, including three of the reproduction gardening cards that Sam sent me last week - their colours are stronger and really bring the project together.
I used the flimsy tram tickets on the battered edges of the stool, because I wanted something that would mould itself to the shape and really show up all the chips and knocks. Ben thinks I'm mad.
I also used opaque patterns from my collection of French fashion papers, which could mould themselves beautifully to the edges, but could also be cut to fit awkward gaps in the middle. At first I tried to trim the edges with scissors, but I soon discovered it looked much better if I tore them carefully.
Lovely moulding in the dents! Here's some Italian for Michaela...
Finally I had everything arranged and spray-glued on - fairly loosely, some of them, as I hoped that the varnish would give a final 'stick' to everything.
I took the stool out to our well-used painting area near the pool (yes, a problem with splashes, it's true).
I've used four coats of this varnish, as, although no one will be sitting on the stool, I still want to give a really good covering to unite the varied thicknesses and absorbancies of the cards and papers I used.
And here is the finished top! The two First Communion cards proved tricky, as they were some kind of inabsorbent fake-parchment material. My advice would be to make sure everything used is absorbent, or it will be hard to stick down and varnish.
And finally, the whole stool! I will probably give it another coat of varnish, just to be sure, and then I will put it next to the white bookshelf in our corridor, near the utility room, and I suspect that it will often have a book or two on it...
I found the idea that inspired me, and the basic techniques, in Petra Boase's excellent 1999 book, 'Funky Junk'. I think there was a TV programme of the same name at about that time, although I have no memory of it. Too busy with small babies at that time...