Home made clothes are the future

I didn’t come to these conclusions overnight. My journey started eight years ago when I was sent to New York for work and got myself measured up for a fitted shirt. It felt fantastic, like a second skin. But on the same trip I met people who worked in sweatshops, right there in Manhattan — and that got me thinking.

Back in London, after paying a local seamstress £5 to fit a piece of elastic to my toddler daughter’s ballet shoes, I started to wonder if I shouldn’t revive some of the sewing skills I had learnt at school, and save cash. (My wife was expensively educated and has no practical skills, but I went to a comprehensive, so I’m OK.) And then I learnt that several important resources, notably oil, are running short. Without cheap oil we’ll have to stop relying on clothes made by people far away, using petroleum-based fibres such as nylon and polyester, or natural fibres grown with vast (petroleum-based) chemical inputs, such as cotton.

I tried telling my wife, who worked at the time for a fashion magazine. I talked darkly about how certain elements of the world in which she lived might not be available that much longer. When climate change and peak oil really kick in, I’d say, we may find ourselves in roughly the same position as the German army of the First World War, which faced the prospect of going into battle naked because Britain controlled 90 per cent of the world’s cotton. What will we wear? Having no alternative, like the Germans, we’ll revert to native fibres such as wool, linen (from flax), hemp and nettle. Yup, the Kaiser’s uniforms were substantially outfitted in nettle.

Harriet didn’t much like the sound of the world I described. But she’s since put up with many more lectures along the same lines. As well as talking, I resolved to do something — to relearn some fundamental skills. In our world, it’s easier to make a film than a shirt, which is how I came to e-mail a film of myself to a fast-paced weekly web-TV show that I had stumbled on by accident. A couple of weeks later I got an reply telling me that my clip was going to be used in the next show. When the time came, I downloaded the episode and started watching.

“Hey, what’s up!” said one of the presenters. “Rob and Corinne here. Welcome to ThreadBanger.

“Recently, we received this video from John-Paul,” Corinne added. And there I was, in my office, twirling to show the difference between a baggy shirt from Thomas Pink and the fitted one that I’d had made in New York.

“Hi, my name’s John-Paul. I need some help with my shirts. I want to take them in.”

Their advice was this: turn the shirts inside out and, with help from a friend, pin them up and sew along the underside of the arms and down the sides. “Try it on and see if it fits. If you’re happy, you can trim off the excess.”

But how was I to do even this modest job? On eBay, I found a treadle-powered 1920s sewing machine otherwise destined for landfill. After taking in my shirts, I tried more complicated jobs. I made a dress for a teddy bear, put new elastic in old boxer shorts, took a number of my daughter’s old baby-grows, cut out the grubbier parts and sewed them together to make a rag-dress that Nancy decorated with a fabric pen.

Then, with help from a local seamstress and my wife’s 99-year-old great-aunt Peggy, I made a paper pattern based on that fitted shirt; and using the pattern I made a second fitted shirt, with a £5 offcut of cotton. Ta-da!

When a favourite pair of jeans fell apart, I copied them, too. The first effort took me all day but was deemed by my wife to be not quite right: the cheap denim had roughly the same drape as cardboard. I was not to wear them outside the house, Harriet said, except on the allotment. So I made another pair, with better fabric. And another. And a couple more shirts. And if anything got a hole in it — jeans, a jumper, the neck on my daughter’s teddy — I darned like crazy.

People tell me that I can’t afford to make my own clothes: I should do something more lucrative and pay somebody to make clothes for me. “Time is money,” they say. I disagree. If every minute of your life had a monetary value, how could you justify staring out of the window, or even going to bed? You should be earning cash instead. The truth is that we all have precisely 24 hours a day, and how we choose to spend that time is up to us. If you say that you have no time to sew, that’s simply because you have allocated your time to something else.

I don’t have any particular talent for sewing: I just like to have a go.

If things go wrong, I’m not cheesed off, because I’m not answerable to anybody. It’s not paid work, done to a deadline, and if I packed it in, nobody would care but me.

When I took up sewing I had no idea how much fun it would be. But as the painter-poet-rock musician Billy Childish told me, around about the time that I was making my first pair of jeans, creativity is our birthright and it comes in many forms. Having learnt to sew reasonably well, I’m sure that I’ll always do it — a bit like cooking. But for the love of variety — and the amazing sense of empowerment that comes from doing things ourselves — I have taken to tackling virtually every other job that needs doing.

When our cellar was overrun by rats, I decided against calling in experts with poison and lowered myself into the malodorous zone beneath our floorboards with building materials to shut off the rats’ entry points. When fitted shelves needed installing, I waited weeks for the carpenters that Harriet had appointed, then lost patience and made them myself — again, while she was out, lest she try to stop me. Gratifyingly, she rather liked what I’d done.

I’ve made picture frames and a bench for my allotment using two wooden pallets I found in a skip. On a similarly thrifty basis, I made a toy octopus — Nancy’s request — using four pairs of tights that she’d outgrown and that no charity shop was going to want. The problem (what to do with old tights) became the solution (where to get hold of a toy octopus). The same principle applied to the crowning glory of my home-made outfit.

I wanted to make something using local materials, but also to claim clothesmaking as a job for men. (A lot of debate in this area is by women, for women, about whether to reclaim the skills of their mothers and grandmothers or to leave them behind. Men don’t get much of a look in.) So I decided to make the only item of clothing uniquely designed for a chap: Y-fronts. And I would use yarn made from that reviled but native weed, nettle.

It might not save the world on its own, but every little helps, as anyone can tell you who grows their own tomatoes instead of shipping them in from far away.

I crocheted in the evening, in front of the telly. (Harriet had little clue what I was up to.) When the pants were done, I tried them on. The yarn doesn’t sting, though the one I used was fairly coarse and the garment doesn’t look sexy either. But nobody needs to know that, not unless I’m hit by a bus and taken to hospital.

Sew Your Own by John-Paul Flintoff is availxable at The Times Bookshop for only £6.75 (rrp £7.99), with free P&P. To order call 0845 2712134 or visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop

How to sew a button
At the start and end of sewing your button, don’t tie off the thread with knots, which can easily come undone. Instead, add several tiny stitches into the fabric at either end for security. For a button to sit properly, it should not be sewn tightly on to the surface of the fabric. You should create a shank, a divider between button and fabric, by wrapping your thread several times around the stitches between the button and the front of your garment. For thin materials, you can create a suitable shank by leaving threads relatively loose when stitching the button. For thicker fabrics, ensure the shank is long enough by stitching over a matchstick.

1 Start with a few tiny stitches to hold the thread securely.

2 Sew loosely in two loops across the holes in the button.

3 For thicker fabrics, ensure you leave a long enough shank by stitching across a matchstick.

4 Wind around the threads to create a shank (but don’t make the shank too thick). To finish off, take the thread to the rear side of the fabric and sew a few more tiny stitches to secure the end.

Keeping spare buttons It is useful to build up a collection of replacement buttons. When I was a child, the “big button jar” under the kitchen sink held a fascinating array of odd buttons, many of which seemed to be in the shape of flowers and animals. Always keep the spare buttons that come with new clothes. A great tip is to get into the habit of saving buttons from garments you have to throw away. That way, you will have full sets of replacements.

How to darn a moth hole
Hand darning, carefully done, can mend a woollen garment almost invisibly. The main key to success is to match your darning thread closely to the garment. Luckily, department stores usually stock a range of woollen embroidery yarns in a number of colours and weights.

1 Place the hole over a smooth, rounded object. Special darning mushrooms are available, but a plastic ball, lightbulb or paperweight will do. Work with the good side upwards for neatness.

2 Run a stitch around the edge of the hole first. This will help the hole to keep its shape as you darn it. Be careful not to stretch the fabric throughout the darning process and don’t tie off any threads. It’s a good idea to wash this new wool to ensure that any shrinkage occurs before it becomes part of your clothing, rather than risking a darned area pulling tight later on. Use only three long threads (one for each stage) and the darn will keep them in place.

3 By darning you are creating an integrated woven patch. So now create a warp with your second thread, adding extra stitches on each side.

Set the spaces between the threads at about the same density as the surrounding fabric.

4 Now add the weft threads at right angles to the first set. Again, sew a couple of stitches before and after the hole.

Across the darn, weave the needle above and below alternate threads, reversing the order when you change direction.

How to sew an invisible hem
To change the length of a hem, you will first need to unpick the old stitches and press the fabric flat to remove the old creases. This is particularly important if you wish to lengthen a hem. Spray a small amount of water on to a hem before pressing, so that the steam can soften the fibres in the crease to make it flatten easily.

Measuring up Now you can measure and pin the garment accurately to the new length.

It’s impossible to measure hems accurately on your own body, so two people are needed for this stage of the process: one model (the owner of the piece of clothing) and one measurer to pin up the hem.

In an emergency, tie off the threads either side of a dropped hem and sew a few stitches to hold it up temporarily.

Preparing the hem Press the pinned hem along the folded edge. Don’t press over the pins — you just want to create a firm crease at the fold so you can remove the pins and work on the hem allowance.

The “hem allowance” is a term that describes the length of the folded material that is turned over at the bottom of your garment.

You will generally want some weight in your hem, as this helps garments to hang better. However, you don’t want so much fabric that the hem becomes obvious or makes the fabric very stiff.

Common hem allowances 0.5–1cm on shirts and tops, 1–2cm on full skirts and lightweight fabrics, 3–4cm on straight or heavy skirts and dresses, and 1.5–3cm on trousers.

Once you have chosen the length, remove the pins, flatten out the garment and cut the fabric to the correct hem allowance.

Sewing up the hem Now you can sew up the hem using a secure blind hemming stitch.

Taking up only one thread from the main part of the fabric with each stitch along the seam, it is almost invisible on the good side (see above). Work carefully and accurately, but without pulling on the fabric. It should hang naturally at the line of the ironed fold when you are finished.

Final press Use a covering cloth to press the hem.

Focus your attention on the edge, but avoid pressing hard over the edge of the hem allowance or you may iron a mark on to the good side of your fabric.

Mend It! by Siân Berry is published by Kyle Cathie Ltd, £16.99