2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

thriftwizard

Parsley does well on a warm-ish windowsill or in the greenhouse - we love the stuff so I've been learning how to grow it for as close to a year-long supply as I can get. It dehydrates well too. If I'm cooking with it, I'll often use it with a sprinkle of dehydrated nettle, too; that adds a "deep green" taste that kind of balances the parsley. Just wish I could get the hang of coriander!

My plans for next year include demolishing a fair bit of my fabric stash, which has kind of taken over the "sewing room" aka the spare bedroom! So - no buying fabric on a whim, only buy if I really don't have anything that can do the job, and only then if that job really does need doing. Example - I've been thinking of making some more "underthings", so found myself looking at jersey in the fabric shop down near Mum whilst buying some proper fabric scissors for DDiL. BUT I do have a bag of big offcuts from the last time I bought jersey... locate & use that up first!

And if I want yarn - I have a spinning wheel & no shortage of fleece & dyestuffs!

Laura_Elsewhere

For a few year snow I've been re-growing my celery bases in a pot of water in the flat and then planted out in my guerilla-garden at the end of the car-park - the new stems and leaves are a really convenient (free!) substitute for parsley, chopped up in most recipes. But without the huge Vit-C that real curly parsley has, I expect... 

I love parsley, stems and curly bits, and always mean to grow more, but keep never getting round to it. I have grown it from seed a few times but not reliably, and my terrible sin is buying plants in pots to plant out in the garden and they sit out there for weeks or months until they go to seed and die, sigh... 

Next year, clotheswise (gardenwise, I'd like to plant some parsley!) I hope to make a lot more. I am pleased to have finally found dresses that fit me that I like the feel and look of (mostly from 'Joanie'), but I need to reduce the quantity of fabric and yarn I have, because it's ridiculous. I fear most of it isn't even colours I like wearing, or it is too flimsy or too heavy, or there simply isn't enough of it to use for my size (and no, it isn't the sort of stuff for colour-blocking, nor the kinds of colours, nor is it similar enough in weight for patchwork, etc., etc.). I need to be ruthless. 

Nelliegrace

Daisy Dog had two fleece jumpers from Aldi. DH came home with 2 fleece lined coats for her by mistake. She is twelve and has started to feel the cold. She takes so long on the lawn finding the right blade of grass to wet. 

2025. I suggested that we have a plastic trug each to fill with clothes, shoes, books, and things for the charity shop every week. 
If we don’t, DD will have to it at some point. 
DH agrees, but his memory is not so good. I shall have to remind him. 

No new clothes, no new shoes, for 2025.
No more vintage linens. 
There is a lot of yarn to be used, and several items to be finished. 

I shall be reading the 1941 editions of The Times. The Government has reduced the supply of fabric available for clothing, and introduced Purchase Tax. Everything is needed for the War Effort. Even with coupons there is no guarantee that new items will be available. There are appeals for people to send good spare clothes to various charities, and to the WVS clothing exchange centres. 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/10653

MrsCD

I'm ashamed to admit that I have just totally overspent and given up counting coupons. 😲😞 I will try to do better next year.
In the meantime, I wish everyone a peaceful Christmas-time and a healthy 2025. 🌲

potplant

For 2025 I'm aiming to go on retrieving clothes I put by (ages ago, some of them), altering/mending as required, and wearing them !  And sewing a dress or top or two from my rather large fabric stash. I think  - having started coupon counting late this year with buying a nice new pair of jeans - that I've just stayed within the limit, warm long underwear being my other new buy (and definitely worth it). 
Oh, and on the subject of parsley - it doesn't usually grow that well for me, but a couple of years ago I tried growing celeriac, which barely produced any root but did make masses of wonderfully healthy green leaves, which I happily used in soups, a good celery/parsley flavour.  Now I just plant it for the leaves!             
Best wishes to all for Christmas and 2025!

Nelliegrace

I was thinking about why we buy so many clothes. 

In the forties people were smaller and thinner, and were not likely to be putting on weight on the rations, so everything in the wardrobe would fit. Their mother and sisters’ clothes would fit and could be borrowed or passed on. 
I have clothes which I hope will fit again, and more that I hope it won’t be necessary to wear again because nothing else fits. There are clothes for best, clothes for scruffy, and lots in between, and in Britain, clothes for every season, and lots of waterproofs. 

Fashions changed then as now, but good clothes were expensive, an investment, made to last, looked after, repaired, darned, altered if necessary. Home made clothes were appreciated, we understood the skill and effort they involved. 
Purchase tax, limited production, and clothes rationing, all made buying clothes difficult. It was seen as patriotic, helping the war effort, to wear the same old coat year after year. A lot of women were in uniform. 

Now we have lots of cheap, imported clothes, synthetic fabrics which soon look scruffy, elastic fabrics which soon sag, and few people have the skill to keep clothes in good repair. When did we darn a pair of tights last? 

Laura_Elsewhere

@Nelliegrace - well, I used to darn tights, but then I switched to wearing very long over-the-knee cotton stockings and they are much more resilient so hardly ever need darning... 

For the first half or more of the C20th, one advantage was that fashions changed slowly and not too drastically, so your best skirt and jacket this year would eventually become your everyday skirt snd jacket, while the current everyday ones (which were your best when new, 5 years ago) are demoted to being old clothes for gardening or room-painting or whatever. you used hats, gloves, bags, scarves and other accessories to be fashionable, and your skirt and jacket, being made of good cloth with sensible seam allowances and not overlocked) could be made over if their cut was really too old-fashioned, by you if possible, but by a local affordable seamstress or tailor if not. 

My beloved independent yarn shops, Ewe & Ply, now run mending workshops to teach people how to darn, patch and reinforce, and they also offer a mending service by post if you have something you can't mend! I do love their attitude...

PipneyJane

potplant said:

For 2025 I'm aiming to go on retrieving clothes I put by (ages ago, some of them), altering/mending as required, and wearing them !  And sewing a dress or top or two from my rather large fabric stash…

You and me both, @potplant!  I have several items of clothing that don’t get worn, simply because they’ve been missing a button or two for longer than I care to admit.

The only things I’ll definitely need next year are t-shirts/tops to wear to work under my suit jacket.  I probably won’t need to buy another suit, since I can now fit into several that I bought years ago before putting on weight.  Once I’m certain I won’t get bigger again, I’ll take in the trousers and skirts on the larger sized suits.  (One bright side of being so ill a year ago.  I lost 2 stone in weight and went down to a size 12.)

Merry Christmas everyone.

- Pip

diminua

My plans for next year include a pair of black boots as my green suede ones are starting to wear badly. I've come to the conclusion it's the way I walk. I supinate, pushing out the upper on the widest part of the foot and creasing the zip (if there is one) over the inner ankle and knocking the teeth out of alignment - and eventually the upper parts company with the sole and the zip refuses to work (and if repaired, will go again). 
I have my eye on solovairs. Not cheap, but they have the advantage of no zip and thicker leather that will hopefully push back, and will be smart enough for work over the winter. 
 
I also want some trousers for work - either two black pairs or a black pair and a grey, as mine are now too loose on me. Ideally I'd want the same thing a size down, but that's a pipe dream. I'll have to see what's about.

Lastly a sports bra with spaghetti straps (so they don't look like bra straps and I can wear it under wide necked tops) but a cross back so they don't slide down my shoulders - like the boots I know this exists and which I want and even what colour I want, I'm just waiting for my coupons. 

I don't think I'll need anything else next year, but we'll see. 

Anyway Merry Christmas folks. 

Cherryfudge

Another five coupons spent - it was even a planned spend as I wanted a (few) lightweight Christmas top(s) and saw one in the sale today that I've ordered. I will be looking for more as I now have enough Christmas jumpers to wear them quite a lot through December and it's fun, but I'd like to have lighter things too.

My coupons are doing quite well this year so I have them to spend. @Nelliegrace, I hope 1941's restrictions don't get even more stringent. How must it have felt not knowing when rationing would come to an end?

I've also cut back on second hand buying this year, seeing as I always bring in more than I pass on. Last year I realised I had too many by far but I've only let a few go. Next year I hope to continue buying in much the same vein. I'm pleased with how my mending has saved lots of items, and even nicer is discovering I'm making a new mend next to an old mend that blended so well that I had completely forgotten it.

Good wishes for a lovely Christmas / Yule / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa one and all.  For those for whom this is a difficult time of year or a year to be left behind, spring is on its way.