I'm a child of the 1960s. Back then, our local school board assumed that girls would need to grow up with home economics skills. In Grade 6 we learned embroidery and hand sewing with Miss Trollope, then in Grades 7 and 8 we had machine sewing and cooking with Mrs. Sidebottom. This was not a one-term dabbling kind of program. We were supposed to learn the basics of nutrition, budgeting, and dress-making. It was the era before fast fashion and if you wanted good quality fashionable clothes, you bought Vogue patterns and made them (there were still plenty of high quality fabric shops around then). I kept my very useful school cookbook for decades until it finally disintegrated.
What did the boys do? Shop class, of course -- woodworking and metal working.
Of course, this sort of gender segregation wasn't at all helpful in terms of male/female attitudes, but at least all of us came away with more than just a surface knowledge of practical life skills.
This
morning I put some of that to use and got to work on a bit of mending.
Recently, mending has taken on a certain glamour, courtesy of the
"visible mending" movement and Instagram. Check out Katrina Rodabaugh's work and that of Tom of Holland
to see what I mean. I'm afraid my little project has little in common
with their inspired repairs. I was merely saving some towels and
bathmats from the rag pile (at least for another year, I hope).
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| Frayed towel. |
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| Overcast edge, using my Singer overcast foot. |
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| Bathmat with two-sided patch over hole. |
I repaired some washcloths too. Feeling very virtuous. Did I mention that I made homemade ice cream? Might need some as a reward..
