And Sew It Goes
It took creativity and skill to turn Grandpa’s old pants into a brand new skirt!
It was the winter that I turned nine—1944—that I saw Granddaddy, John Mooney, drive up to the gap between the snowbanks of our front walkway. Grandma, Ella Mooney, hustled out of the car, all five-foot nothing with her hat planted firmly on her head. In her usual businesslike manner, she strode into the house bearing a well-worn pair of Granddaddy’s dark blue wool serge pants over her arm.
She immediately parked herself on a kitchen chair. Armed with a razorblade she started ripping out the seams of the pant legs. Meanwhile, Mommy pounced on me with her trusty seamstress fabric tape measure with its beautiful tortoise shell handle. I was measured up and down and round about. Obviously, I was going through a growth spurt and needed an addition to my wardrobe. While my three sisters played in the parlour, I was kept in the kitchen to help with the procedure.
When the seams were ripped out of the pants, the legs were then cut off below the pockets. I was asked to get the dishpan out and put warm water from the wood stove reservoir into it. Our water supply was from a well and kept in a pail that sat on the cupboard. The kitchen range had a reservoir that heated several pails of water when hot water was needed. Grandma washed the fabric pieces with some of our homemake lye soap and rinsed them well with fresh water. They were then squeezed in a towel to remove most of the water. Meanwhile, Mommy was stoking the fire to heat the sad irons that sat at the back of the kitchen stove. The fabric was then stretched out over the ironing board.
Grandma used a whisk to remove the remaining lint that adhered to the seam lines, probably from Granddaddy’s long woolly underwear. She pressed the pant legs with a press cloth and the hot sad irons until they were dry. Grandma and Mommy held lengthy confabs about which parts of the material were salvageable and I was measured again just to be sure.
Measuring Up
Out came the scissors. If I remember correctly, six pieces were selected and cut with a tapered shape, from the less scruffy inside of the pant legs. While Grandma worked on the serge fabric, Mommy pulled out a bleached flour bag from the cupboard under the sink. It was to become the “waist” for my skirt. No waistband for a girl with a rounded tummy. I complained but she was sure I couldn’t defy gravity and maintain a look of decency. Besides, when I think of it, there probably wasn’t enough material to make a band and the necessary braces to hold it in place.
Mommy made up the waist, with an appropriate “grow tuck,” threaded her Raymond treadle sewing machine and set about sewing the panels together. The extra fabric was folded into pleats at the waist to help hide the seam joins. After the pleats were pressed into place, the extra deep hem was turned up so I would
have room to grow. In spite of no belt, it was a neat skirt and made up my Sunday-go-to-meeting outfit for a long time. I had a beautiful, light-blue, lacy handknit sweater with a scalloped edge at the bottom to team with the skirt. With my lace pullover and pleated skirt, I was well-dressed. I still remember having to tuck that bulky skirt into my snowpants when I went outside that winter.
Just why did we have to have recycled fabric? It was wartime. Orders to Eatons or Simpsons catalogues often came back with a “sorry, not available.” Well-worn clothes were recycled. Flour bags and sugar bags became clothing of all sorts, tea towels or bedding. Nothing was wasted. Mommy made sure that the bags were really bleached so our bloomers did not say “Five Roses” or “Redpath” across the seat as happened to some of our friends.
Of course money was in short supply in our household, but noone burdened us girls with that information, so we believed we were rich. And so we were!