Vivienne Westwood once almost ran me over on her bike on Clapham High Street. I don’t care who you are, darling, you shouldn’t be riding it on the pavement. However, despite such censure I have decided to take her advice to the general public of several years ago and not buy any clothes for a year. I have gone a month so far. It’s not so bad really. My clothes have not started to deteriorate just yet. Besides, my AMAZING new sewing machine that the darling Mr Welch bought me for my birthday does a fabulous darning stitch so I should be fine come the inevitable escape of my poor old buttocks from their threadbare, faux-denim hammock. It’s all about making do and mending for the next year. The original point of quilting, of course, was to use up scraps of fabric from old clothing. I’ve not really entered in to the true spirit of things by only every buying pre-cut fabric collections specifically designed to be made in to quilts. They are just so gorgeous. It takes quite a long time to amass a decent stash of fabric, I have found. At least I’ve started though. I have been collecting Mr Welch’s old shirts in the lower compartment of my bijou Chinese cabinet to make…A SHIRT QUILT. That is genuinely what they’re called. The patterns and colours are all sort of the same-but-different, much like the styling of teen pop sensation One Direction. A nice stripe here, a little herringbone or chunky gingham there. All on a pleasing spectrum of blues. Slowly, slowly I’m fattening up my reclaimed fabric collection, my particular quest being for good quality pieces in white, cream and golds. The aim being to have enough of the right stuff to make my dream quilt. Out of the swathes of princess satin that was once my wedding dress. Too precious to me to leave hanging on the back of the door in the spare room forever, and not timeless enough to be the sort of piece that my daughter might like to wear, it is destined to be cut in to hundreds of 2½” squares, sewn together all pretty, backed with velvet as cosy as a kiss and put on our bed to warm us forever.
