2025 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

PipneyJane

kiwisavings said:

Some photos and videos on rationing that might be interesting 

https://flashbak.com/the-rationing-years-in-britain-1939-1954-21011/

What an amazing site, @kiwisavings.  Thank you for posting it.  I never knew that potatoes were rationed in 1947!

I have some spends to declare:  7 coupons on this light blue, cotton-denim, midi dress from M&S - purchased just before their systems went down - and 16 coupons on four 100g/450m skeins of 3-ply Wool Local, a brand by Erika Knight which is grown, and spun within 50 miles of Bradford, Yorkshire), purchased in Store 104 in Rochester during this weekend’s Sweeps Festival.  It’s 50% Blue Faced Leicester and 50% Masham wool.  The colourway, 814 Thornton, is a dark green.  This Raveler’s photo captures it beautifully.   Could I have gotten away with 3 skeins? Possibly, but 4 means I can knit a long-sleeved cardigan and not have to worry about running out of yarn or it being too short.

The above brings my total spend to 37 coupons.

That leaves me with 29 coupons and we’re not even half way through the year.  < sigh >

I think the best thing about the Fashion On The Ration Challenge, is that it makes you look twice at what you already have, plus you have to plan your spending to fill out the gaps  My biggest problem right now is that, thanks to last year’s illness, half of my clothes are too big, e.g. on Tuesday, I had to reject a suit because I couldn’t risk showing the belted trousers gaping around my waist, if/when I took my jacket off in the warm weather.   However, I am trying to control my weight, to prevent weight gain, because on Thursday I had the opposite issue, when the trousers of the first suit I chose were tight enough to show the lines of my tucked in tee-shirt.  That suit was last worn a month ago, when it was still too cold to take off my jacket, and I’m certain it didn’t feel so snug.

I do have some spends planned:  a new sports bra (1.5 coupons) and, possibly, some tee-shirts (maybe 3, so 12 coupons), but that’s about it.  If I can find the latter in a charity shop, I will be very happy.

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane - this was the time when people grimly talked about winning the war but losing the peace… potato rationing came in only a few months after bread was finally rationed. 

For most people the post-war years were more of a struggle than the war years… but safer, of course.

there was a lot of anger about food being sent to the recent enemy-nations, most obviously Germany… but you can’t read much about the appalling conditions in much of Europe during the last years of the war, the terrible ‘Hunger Winter’, without realising that not only were there just no stores of food available but also the people themselves had no reserves.
in Britain, we were inconvenienced by extra-tight rationing but physically we were very healthy and could stand a tight diet for a while, even though it was miserable and depressing and difficult… but in mainland Europe people were literally starving in the Peace…

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/10/potato-rationing

PipneyJane

I knew about the Hunger Winter, @Laura_Elsewhere and the resentment felt by many of the British.  There were an awful lot of displaced people to feed on the European mainland and farms/farming families that needed to recover before they could become productive again.  I also knew about bread rationing.  I’m just surprised that I never knew about potatoes being rationed.

- Pip

alicef

another 3 coupons to declare for a swimsuit.  Actually it's a legsuit, but I'm guessing it's the same in coupons? 

I'm very behind on the thread posts but as I have, finally, handed over my plants for the plant sale, I can take some time to catch up. 

Gem-gem

Good evening everyone, 
No new spends for me so my total spend is still at 26 coupons. 

Regarding rationing of bread and potatoes - I never realised that these were rationed after the war. I knew that things were tighter after but this slipped past me. Very interesting reading. My DH would have really struggled with the lack of bread. 

PipneyJane

When I think of post War rationing, I always remember this scene from Mary Stewart’s Madam Will You Talk: 

But they tell me that in France the cattle still grow steaks … I wonder how I shall stand up to a beefsteak?’

‘You have to do these things gradually.’ I opened one of the slatted shutters, closed against the late afternoon sun. ‘Probably the waiter will just introduce you at first, like Alice – Louise, biftek; biftek, Louise. Then you both bow, and the steak is ushered out.’

IIRC the book is set about 5 years after the end of the War.  

- Pip (Off to re-read my copy, in case I can get a better idea of the date of the book)

kiwisavings

PipneyJane said:

What an amazing site, @kiwisavings.  Thank you for posting it.  I never knew that potatoes were rationed in 1947!

I have some spends to declare:  7 coupons on this light blue, cotton-denim, midi dress from M&S - purchased just before their systems went down - and 16 coupons on four 100g/450m skeins of 3-ply Wool Local, a brand by Erika Knight which is grown, and spun within 50 miles of Bradford, Yorkshire), purchased in Store 104 in Rochester during this weekend’s Sweeps Festival.  It’s 50% Blue Faced Leicester and 50% Masham wool.  The colourway, 814 Thornton, is a dark green.  This Raveler’s photo captures it beautifully.   Could I have gotten away with 3 skeins? Possibly, but 4 means I can knit a long-sleeved cardigan and not have to worry about running out of yarn or it being too short.

The above brings my total spend to 37 coupons.

That leaves me with 29 coupons and we’re not even half way through the year.  < sigh >

I think the best thing about the Fashion On The Ration Challenge, is that it makes you look twice at what you already have, plus you have to plan your spending to fill out the gaps  My biggest problem right now is that, thanks to last year’s illness, half of my clothes are too big, e.g. on Tuesday, I had to reject a suit because I couldn’t risk showing the belted trousers gaping around my waist, if/when I took my jacket off in the warm weather.   However, I am trying to control my weight, to prevent weight gain, because on Thursday I had the opposite issue, when the trousers of the first suit I chose were tight enough to show the lines of my tucked in tee-shirt.  That suit was last worn a month ago, when it was still too cold to take off my jacket, and I’m certain it didn’t feel so snug.

I do have some spends planned:  a new sports bra (1.5 coupons) and, possibly, some tee-shirts (maybe 3, so 12 coupons), but that’s about it.  If I can find the latter in a charity shop, I will be very happy.

- Pip

Thanks Pip
It does sound like the rationing after the war was particularly hard. In New Zealand it was easier as most rationing ended in 1948, but restrictions on dairy products and eggs continued until 1950. My mum remembers her parents sending back food (e.g. fruit cakes) to the UK - her father was born in England and so there were close relatives there.
The wool that you have chosen looks lovely and I agree it's best to buy a little extra so that you are not playing 'wool roulette' once you get to the sleeves/bottom of a cardi.
I also sympathise with you about weight changes, I've dropped at least one dress size due to a change in my diet and have a large amount of clothes that I need to alter to fit. Some items like jeans are tricky and so I will have to look at finding some replacements (hopefully from charity shops too)

Sarahspangles

PipneyJane said:

Nelliegrace said:

Thank you for the recipe for Anzac biscuits. We have our morning WI meeting on 8th May and they would go down well.

Perfectly timed for VE Day, @Nelliegrace.  

Will people be attending any of the commemorative events?  I’ll be at one at the Royal Albert Hall, that evening, wearing the poppy I purchased at the Longest Yarn exhibition. 

- Pip

I had the village VE event in my diary, but in the end it was swamped because ITV turned up to broadcast! So we went to help at my daughter’s allotment instead.

I had a lovely afternoon earlier this week tidying my sewing basket and working out what all the needles - hand and machine - and threads are meant to be used for. Over the years the basket had filled up with spools of coloured Gutermann polyester thread bought for specific items, so I’ve separated those out for now. (At one point, if I wanted to buy thread I used a sewing shop near my office and they didn’t stock cotton thread at all, apart from white and black). I’ve filled my basket with thread useful for basting and general sewing.

In the middle of this OH brought out (of the garage) some scissors he ‘saved’ when he cleared his parents’ house. They’re possibly his grandfather’s tailor’s shears and have sharpened nicely.

I’ve signed up for an online clothes fitting course, buying the required equipment was like shopping for Hogwarts! I bet when he sees me using the tools, OH reveals he has those in the garage too, he just didn’t recognise them for what they were. I’m just waiting for my first pattern to come back from the copy shop now.

Nelliegrace

We celebrated VE Day at Women’s Institute yesterday. Some of the ladies dressed up, lots of headscarves and hair curlers like Hilda Ogden. We had bunting, flags to wave, and a sing song. I wore my old brown corduroy trousers, brown lace up shoes, and a dark green top, not exactly dressing up, but similar to my aunt’s Land Girl uniform.

The WI recommended cake recipe for VE Day was a bit of a disaster, it fell into crumbs. I had a tasty cheese scone, and the tea without sugar we have got used to drinking.

The speaker was excellent, she told us about Shakespeare’s Women, relatives, friends, and characters in his plays. His mother had seven sisters!

The competition was, A Favourite Sonnet, and I chose An Irish Airman Forsees His Death by William Butler Yeats, in memory of my great uncle, a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps who died in 1917.

Cherryfudge

I spent VE day in Northern Ireland and one of the places we visited was the Irish Linen Centre in Lisburn. I thought of this thread (sorry about the pun) because many of you would have found it as interesting as I did. I got talking to a woman who was spinning a linen thread: she was hugely knowledgeable and I only wish I could remember half of what she told me. I forget all the details but the amount of our language that comes from the linen industry is surprising. For instance, the matrilineal side of the family tree is the distaff side - named after part of the spinning wheel because woman span and men wove. (I had a little go at weaving, not on the big old looms that would have filled a room and dominated the house, but on a tiny one).

They had an example of Egyptian linen from Tutankhamun's tomb, which makes it, I think, three and half thousand years old. It was incredibly fine work, a lot more delicate than many modern fabrics. The finest work was done by young girls, who could spin a thread half the width of a hair. However, their bodies became deformed by their craft: right leg muscles became huge from powering the treadle, the spine was twisted by sitting at the spinning wheel and their fingerprints wore off from wetting the thread with spittle on their fingers. Many were dead by the age of 35. That certainly made me think twice about the value of linen!

Nowadays, there's no Irish linen industry, it all comes from China. Making linen thread was a long term process (six months) and the long stemmed plants have all but gone from this side of the world. Modern flax, grown for seed, has shorter stems that don't make linen-length fibres. The fibres themselves were extracted by soaking the stems in a pond (it stank, apparently) then a process similar to carding yielded the fine fibres which were paler (hence 'flaxen hair'). Raw linen is brown but it could be bleached white.

The museum had tried growing flax that they could spin from but it takes such a lot of land that they only got a handful out of an acre or so - which meant the spinner only span when there were people watching as there wasn't enough raw material. Oh, and the wheel is different from a wool spinning wheel, which is to do with how the bundle of unspun fibre is fed to the spinner, but I can't remember exactly how.

I did ask about how linen is grown in China and whether there is a mechanised process but didn't really find out anything.

Anyhow - it was brilliant and I'd recommend it to you all!

And coupon-wise, I've picked up a few charity shop and car boot finds recently and ordered a uniform tee shirt for a children's activity I help at, so all those are coupon free (I'm not asking too deeply about what types of uniform were provided without coupons!)