Make Do and Mend

Daisy

I need a load of new clothes but I think I'll check out charity shops. I only go in usually to buy Christmas cards. Can you get better bargains if you go to a posh area?

Bargain_Rzl

Daisy wrote:

I need a load of new clothes but I think I'll check out charity shops. I only go in usually to buy Christmas cards. Can you get better bargains if you go to a posh area?

If it's a posh area and the charity shop is a major chain like Oxfam or Scope, then the only drawback is that they tend to know a designer/superior-quality item when they see one, and sometimes price it higher accordingly. Though in general, the charity shop price for items like this still works out at a smaller proportion of the garment's original price than it does for your average high-street item.

Often the real bargains are to be found in small local hospice shops and similar - the sort that tend to be run by a little old lady who doesn't know Prada from Primark, and everything's only a couple of quid... If you're feeling virtuous you can always offer to pay a bit extra if you find something really good!

furrypig

I bought a handbag from a messy little secondhand shop near my parents.
Yep you guessed its GUCCI!!!
Well I don't know the label well enogh to know if its a fake one so showed it to a friend who acyually has a real one and she thinks it might be the genuine article though no idea how I tell!!
I bought it as it was a colour and size I needed so don't really care
£2 well spent!

culpepper

Ive just bought 2 pairs of mens pyjamas for myself.My old blue cotton pair (bought 1978 ,year I left school) still fit because the elastic is perished but they are very faded and a bit see through now and saggy. I cant stand womens jimjams,they are always cut too short on the jacket, made of awful material with teddies on or flowery.
I used to buy all our clothes from the charity but now buy my boy(16)trousers,tshirts and shorts in millets as they are well made and dont have adverts all over them. I still do buy him fleeces in charity shops though .
My girl(15) buys herself clothes in charity shops (she saves her pocket money) or gets them bought for her xmas and birthdays.
My own clothes are charity shop bought throughout the year.
OH buys from Millets and charity shops.He has a lot of discarded police shirts(they throw them away rather than mend them)
I do knit occassionally and mend everything till it is past it.
My oldest clothes are the 1978 jimjams and some hand knitted socks from 1986
My daughter has 2 of my blouses from 1980(im much broader shouldered nowadays so they dont fit me).

Bargain_Rzl

A friend paid £15 for a little red Hermes handbag at Kensington High Street Oxfam. Obviously if it had been a "messy little secondhand shop" it might have been under a fiver... but then again, it's still Hermes (genuine) for £15. I suppose it depends whether you really don't have any money at all, or whether you've got a bit to spare and are prepared to pay what is still an amazing price for something posh.

Austin_Allegro

Oxfam have a few shops called 'Oxfam Originals' that sell designer goods. There's one in Chelsea, but when I went there they told me they had just been burgled and most of their stock taken. That gives you some idea of how good their stock is!

Mrs_Thrift

Well my personal challenge to not buy any new clothes in April is going well so far - went shopping with my Mum for herself on Saturday and had a great time. I love taking my Mum or friends shopping as I get the thrill of shopping without spending my own money, and get to treat them like a full sized doll, which I love, hehe! But even better htis time was that my Mum treated me to a £4.50 jumper and a £1.50 poncho from the extra discounted M & S sales rails because they were such good bargains and they'd caught my eye, hurrah!

So I've got new clothes this weekend after all, but it didn't cost me a thing. Three cheers for generous parents!

Queenie

SnowyOwl wrote:

I'm not terribly interested in having a constant turnover of clothing...I can make thing last for years and years. However the one thing that I do spend far too much money on is tights (I am an office worker). Even if I don't snag the legs then the heel goes or the toe. Does anybody have any good tips for making them last longer than one wear, or recommend the best ones for repeated wear?

If you buy your tights in multipacks all one colour then a way to "recycle" them it ... when you have two pairs and each has one leg that is laddered, cut off the one laddered leg of each pair, then wear the pairs together: outwardly, no one will know you are wearing two pantie parts

I recently had to stitch up the crotch of some PJ's belonging to my youngest ... dh was all for throwing them out! :rolleyes:

Tips:

• Kids jeans/trousers which have become too short in the leg just cut off above the knee, hem and call them shorts.
• Blouses can be updated simply by changing the buttons.
• Cotton shirts and blouses, even T-shirts can be given a new life simply by dying them.
• If the lower half of a blouse/shirt sleeve has a tear, cut it off about elbow level and either: take a deep hem or remove the cuff and reattach to the now short sleeve.
• Clothes which looks a bit "thin and limp" can be revitalised with starching (use spray starch when ironing )

My mother was a whizz at removing collars to turn them inside out to repair those, but I was never taught and never felt the need to know :rotfl: (Wish I'd listened to her more now though!)

Austin_Allegro

moggins wrote:

The last time I bought clothes was a pair of jeans from the charity shop as my other pair had got so thin with washing and wearing that they split right down the bum

LOL! I can sympathise. I had a gorgeous linen suit from Cording's which was already pretty worn when I got it from Oxfam. I wore it for about 4 summers. While out at work visiting clients, I was sitting at a metal cafe table and my bum felt cold...the trousers had split across the bum...not only that I had been walking around for about an hour without noticing. With the aid of a tactfully held newspaper, I rushed home to change!

As a true Old Styler however I have kept the jacket to wear on its own!

calleyw

Well I proud of myself :j . I don't buy a lot of clothes. But I do wear them to death.

Anyway I had 3 pairs of trouser that could have gone in the bin. But no, one of them the seams had come undone on the crotch area. And on the other two the seams had split as they where track suit bottom type material and had just split on the upper inner thigh as the material had got a little thin.

So got my second hand sewing machine out that I paid £95 for about 3 months ago and sewed them all up. Wore one pair today and they survived me walking 3 miles in to town and back again. So that has saved me about £30 in buying new trousers.

I think this next one might stretch my ability at using a sewing machine. But I have to take up some tracksuit bottoms as they are way too long and drag along the floor. But they have zips in them. Urm do I put the zips back in or cheat and just re-stitch the seems. Not sure. But that will mean another wearable pair of trousers. So approx. £40 saved in total.

The main reason for buying the machine was to re-sew seams. As I thought as I lost weight (yeah right we shall see)that my fave clothes I could undo the seams and re-seam them and still get to wear my favourites.

So my machine is nearly halfway through paying for itself.

I knew it would be a good investment

This comes from a woman that can cross stitch but can't sew on a button :rotfl:

Yours

Calley