My schooldays were oh sew practical...
WHEN I was a child, the village school at Barmby Moor in the East Riding of Yorkshire did not teach ‘posh’ subjects, such as Shakespeare and French. We learned Wordsworth’s Daffodils and the works of other Victorian poets, and the headmaster would read a Dickens novel serial fashion during the last lesson on a Friday. A girl’s education concentrated on her leaving school equipped to become a good housewife. I was taught to patch different materials, make buttonholes and sew on buttons. Pillowcases and petticoats had French or run and fell seams. I was proud to be given the tasks of smocking a little dress for the niece of Miss Clark, our teacher, and hem-stitching serviettes for the headmaster’s wife during boring history and geography lessons. Miss Clark taught me to knit, and I still have a sampler showing the different embroidery stitches. I still fold pillowcases into three as was done to show off embroidery in those days. The day before our first darning lesson, Miss Clark asked us to take in a sock or garment that needed to be mended. After school, playing with friends, I climbed over a gate into a field, caught my new jumper on barbed wire and ripped a hole in it. I was so upset. A new jumper was special. I loved it and knew Mam wouldn’t be pleased. I got away with a lecture about not playing in the field, but the accident did provide a garment to darn. Mam had only thick embroidery silk in the same blue as my jumper, but I made the best of it, remembering that a skilled embroiderer once told me to make a feature of mistakes. I can’t remember how good or bad my first darn was, but a silk darn on a wool jumper must have made quite a feature. I do know I wore that jumper with a plaid kilt to school on alternate weeks for the rest of its life.