2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Rah

Back to the topic at hand though, I bought some headbands the other day to keep my unruly hair out of the way whilst running. Do these use coupons? I had initially thought not, categorising with ribbons, elastic and suchlike, but it turns out that these are massive! Seriously, it's so much fabric it's more like a scarf than a hairband!

maryb

Not preachy at all Rah and I’m interested that you do a lot of carbon footprint work.  I found it hard to really get to grips with understanding as there are so many different measures used and it takes a lot of digging to see how they relate to each other. Eg carbon emissions measured in gigatonnes but atmospheric levels measured by volume  I don’t have a scientific background but after a career in accounting  I do like my numbers to tie up and make sense.  

Liverpool_Anne

Oh my, about 10 pages to catch up on, no spends. I tried to get some slippers but haven't found any that I like online so far. 
Wedding dresses, I got mine in the Laura Ashley sale, 15pounds iirc. White cotton with pin tucks on the bodice and a gathered skirt, what I really loved about it was it had pockets in the side seams. I still have it in the loft as I plan to use the fabric in the skirt to make something, not sure what but there's quite a bit in the skirt, the bodice won't fit me now, I too lost weight before my wedding.
Food rationing I can't think about at the moment, I am mainly veggie but right now I am on a special diet preparing for a medical thing, part of the ongoing tests to find out why I fainted, upshot is I can't have any fruit or veg, only white bread, white rice or white pasta. I can have eggs and cheese and, thank goodness chocolate. I am living on toast, mashed potatoes and eggs with the odd plain cheese sandwich and small pieces of chocolate. It's doable but so far from my normal diet and quite boring. I love a cheese sandwich but with salad or pickles etc. and I am practically drooling over the bananas in the fruit bowl lol. Hopefully it won't be for long.
Love the t-shirt and the kimono jacket. So many talented people, you are an inspiration

maryb

Sorry to hear you have to swear off so much at the moment.  Have they given you a date for the procedure?

dolly84

I've been vegetarian for years and vegan for about 4 years now.  I did it for health, ethical and sustainability reasons, I have leather shoes, boots and belts that I have had for years and still wear as getting rid of them would be crazy, I also wear wool but I do buy it second hand as I do most things.  The one thing in clothing that I won't even buy second hand is down, I have a massive problem with all the cheap coats there are out there that are down filled, where do people think this is coming from and how do they think it is sourced, just looking at one retailer and the down filled items they sell in all the colours and sizes and I just see all the birds.

I keep my consumption of processed vegan foods to a minimum, it is just as bad a diet as any other if you go down that road.  I think the destruction of forests for soya planting is less to do with vegan diets and more to do with animal feeds as that is where most soya goes to as meat cows do not just exist on grass, funnily enough my biggest problem is with the consumption of cheap chicken, there are fried chicken shops everywhere and every food shop has tons of chicken products, I look at the fresh chicken in the supermarket and then multipy that by how many supermarkets there are in the area I live and then imagine all the actual birds, and that is just one area on one day, it makes me feel sad and scared.  All we can do is our best and no matter what I try to do I know I am having a negative impact and there is no solution because there is one fact that is causing all of this - too many people on the planet.

Liverpool_Anne

Dolly, yes it it a major problem. I think what made me go veggie was when I saw a film about a chicken processing factory. Enough said. I do wear some leather shoes and have a couple of leather bags but like you they are not new but the conundrum comes when you look at how other shoes, bags, clothes etc are made. There are so many things to consider it can be hobsons choice sometimes. I tend to think it is more about the amount of stuff people think they need rather than the number of people. In some areas of the world the population is quite low. I try to think about sustainability, reduce, reuse, recycle as the saying goes. I just do the best I can and hope others do the same.

Liverpool_Anne

Maryb, if all other tests go ok hopefully it will be tomorrow afternoon, then I can get back to 'normal' food

PipneyJane

Liverpool_Anne said:

Maryb, if all other tests go ok hopefully it will be tomorrow afternoon, then I can get back to 'normal' food

Fingers crossed, @Liverpool_Anne.  Fingers crossed.

- Pip

SezzaF

Interesting talk about the sustainability of food and how we can make our own choices in that matter. We were having a conversation recently about the potential changes in the way meat is treated and what might appear on our selves from other countries. I just said that I would rather eat less meat and know where it had come from and reduce our consumption and that no one is forced to eat cheap meat.

I do have some spends to declare. A pair of trousers - I suppose you would call them joggers although they are on the smarter side. They were not cheap but were from a company that has very good sustainability credentials. As I said, I have decided a would rather pay a bit more and buy a lot less. So 6 coupons i think?

I also have a spend I regret already. I will count it as 2 coupons for a metre of material although it is only a pack of fat quarters. i was tempted by a deal from a small haberdashery and paid far more than is sensible thinking of the small business rather then my pocket. Now I have some more fat quarters to add to the collection I already have!

Anyone got any favourite ways of using them up?   
 

Laura_Elsewhere

@SezzaF for my Mum's birthday I've just used an FQ of her beloved Liberty of London cotton to make her a face-covering, a 14" square handkerchief, and just enough left over to use as the drawstring channel along the top of a bag made from a bit of unbleached linen I already had. 

My biggest problem with FQs is that almost all the ones I've ever used (friends send me them, unsolicited... mostly patterns I'll never use but I use them for presents for nieces (rows of cupcakes or sickly pink flowers, etc.) or as linings that won't be seen (rows of navy-blue Scottie dogs (?!) now lining our oven gloves)) have really seriously faded after just a few washes, and in many cases worse than that they've developed big white lines across them where they've folded in the wash. Short-chopped fibres combined with cheap post-weaving prints, I guess... 
The FQs that haven't done that have been Liberty of London, and Rose & Hubble, so I suppose it shows how much better the quality is of their fabric. The experience of spending ages invisibly-hemming a large handkerchief by hand only to have it look really awful after just one wash has made me very wary of cheap FQs!

Here's Mum's Liberty presents, photographed just before I finished them: