Make Do and Mend

she_grinch

luxor4t wrote: »

My mum made one of those! The funniest thing I have ever seen on a beach (apart from an Australian naturist ) was my gran trying to remove numerous granny-garments and change into her prehistoric 1950s boned swimming costume inside it.

Funny DH and I were on holiday in Gorleston this summer and saw a lady trying desperately hard to change out of her wet cossie into dry clothes inside one of these toweling tubes, she was a rather large lady so there wasn't much elbow room. Everyone in eyeshot was watching avidly at the poor woman's struggling. Seems to me that the very garment designed for discretion caused more of an interest than if she had stripped naked!!!!

zarazara

Brilliant Thread Peeps!

she_grinch

I wanted a couple of deckchairs for the garden and they are really expensive so when I saw 3 battered and holey ones at the skip and paid a £1 each for them I was chuffed.
I streipped off the fabric and painted the frames with blue gloss paint from the garage.
I had some plain cream strong canvas and 2 spare beach towels in the fabric stash so made covers for them stapling them to the frame.
They look smashing and are really bright cheerful and comfy
Not bad for an outlay of £3:cheesy:

nannaC

Hi all count NannaC in this brilliant thread. Like many OSers have been make do and mending for years.
In our house anything that can be reinvented/reused is. Most of our furniture started out as old & battered that no one wanted [we fondly refer to our home as 'The House the Village Threw Out'], we would come home to find old oak/mahogany furniture in our front garden with old neighbours saying just put a bit of wood for your fire in the front. Old sheets are made into pillowcases, or backing for patchwork, with the worn bits used for dusters.

Menolly_2

I have just learned how to "turn" a collar - DH has several shirts where the cuffs aren't too bad but the collars are really on their way out. You simply unpick the collar and reinsert it the other way round and stitch it in place. I was ridiculously pleased with myself when I had finished! My mum used to do this with Dad's shirts (he was also always harder on the collars than the cuffs).
Today, I made a new seat cushion for the kitchen chair, recycling the old one by unpicking the (badly worn) front to use as a pattern and re-using the back. The fabric came from an almost-freebie - I picked up one of those big sample books full of curtain fabrics at a boot sale for 50p and have used the larger pieces to make tote bags and now a cushion cover. The rest of the pieces will end up patchworked into a long cushion for the bench seat on the deck, ready for next summer (hopefully we will have a nice one). The bench itself was renovated this summer - the legs were a bit wobbly so DH used the pallets that the decking and pergola parts had been delivered on and constructed a sort of shelf underneath the bench that neatly braced and supported it AND gave me somewhere to put things. Once the whole lot had been given a coat of Garden Shades in holly green, it looked really good and as if it were MEANT to be like that.

We have just finished the first part of our kitchen refurb - the units were good and the doors solid wood (but looking rather tired) so we have painted them - I wanted Farrow & Ball Cooking Apple Green but their paint was way too pricey, so I got as close to it as I could with the Dulux Colour Matching service. We changed the handles and the units look so very different now - I'm really thrilled! The kitchen chair for which I made the new seat cover is also a recycled object - it is one of a pair of stick-backed carvers left from an old dining set. We chose a darker shade of the paint used on the kitchen cabinets and painted the chair.

I have just finished reading "Nella Last's War", so "make do and mend" is much on my mind. I actually like being able to find new uses for things and there are some great ideas on this thread!

Hardup_Hester

D&DD, I made a denim quilt 10 years ago, it's still going strong, my DD keeps it in her car & uses it for picnics & all sorts. I made it from dinner plate sized circles backed with red/white/blue fabric. Each circle was backed & then sewed together in squares. Sounds wierd I know, but it worked well.

Lalaladybird

I nearly threw away my dd's outgrown vests and sleepsuits yesterday but they are lovely soft cotton so I kept them but, other than dusters, what can I use them for?

rhiwfield

One or two that mostly fit in make and mend

Bought a second hand draughting table for my son for £25 many years ago but when he stopped using it, we used the large wooden back to make a shoe rack, while the 5 foot ruler is invaluable for crafting and woodworking.

Had 2 faulty 3-drawer kitchen units delivered this year (following an underfloor leak) and we were sent replacements. I'm pretty sure the faulty units can be made into an apple store (one of my winter tasks). A two tier plastic mini greenhouse had given up the ghost. We use it now to store onions overwinter.

After the same leak we had to get rid of our lounge settee and chairs that we'd had for about 20 years and which had been repaired after our boisterous lads had cracked the subframes!. Furniture seems to have become a fashion item for many people and good second hand suites can be picked up very cheaply as people change a room's look. So we bought 2 matching suites, (on Ebay and Adtrader) all in sage green leather and in pretty good condition, for a total cost of £300 including transport. One piece of stitching was needed to repair a seam, and we cleaned them thoroughly, but buying new would have cost £3,000.

We keep offcuts from fitted carpets and use them to make warm linings for our dog's bed.

I'm still using a good quality second hand typist's chair that we picked up from a bust firm for peanuts in the mid-nineties. MIL has darned the seat fabric once. In the meantime my son has gone thru 3 computer chairs from PC World/Staples that have fallen apart.

Nearly all our walls are emulsioned. To minimise paint wastage we use 3 basic colour schemes from the Wickes trade emulsions range so that rooms can be repainted from leftover paint and we dont have to throw away old paint. If we run out of any one kind of paint, we just top up from Wickes.

Old sports socks seem ideal for cleaning the glass on woodburning stoves.

A sock with buttons sewn on and filled with rice, beans or sand, a piece of downspout and an old plank make a quick cheap "splat the rat" for your village fete or children's party.

Pink.

Lalaladybird wrote: »

I nearly threw away my dd's outgrown vests and sleepsuits yesterday but they are lovely soft cotton so I kept them but, other than dusters, what can I use them for?

Keep them for dd2 or ds1

Seriously though, if you are hoping to have more children they're worth hanging on to. I kept all the tiny baby clothes as they were barely worn and pretty unisex and the little white vests and babygro's did all three of my children despite there being a ten year age gap between the eldest and the youngest. They're still as good as new and I keep getting them out to freecycle them but I'm too sentimental and keep putting them away again because I can't bear to part with them.

Now we have Christmas behind us and spring is on it's way, it's worth keeping those clear, plastic box thingies that supermarket fruit is packed in as they make great 'mini greenhouses' for starting seedlings for the garden.

Pink

gaztop_3

Pink-winged wrote: »

Now we have Christmas behind us and spring is on it's way, it's worth keeping those clear, plastic box thingies that supermarket fruit is packed in as they make great 'mini greenhouses' for starting seedlings for the garden.

Pink

...and old ice cream tubs for seed trays (don't forget to put drainage holes in the bottom though!). The lids of white tubs can be cut into rectangles and used as name tags or row markers for the trays.

On the gardening theme, anyone who's ever grown onions will know that they need drying out. Well, an old trick that my mum has done for years is to use old tights or stockings to hang them in - put in an onion, tie a knot then put in the next onion and so on. Because they don't touch each other they are far less likely to rot.

Also, if you don't have room for a compost heap, you can put used coffee grounds directly onto the soil as instant plant food. If you don't drink 'real' coffee, Starbucks give their grounds away free. You don't even have to buy anything.