These old things? I made them ALL myself!
How TV’s PENNY SMITH has got her whole wardrobe sewn up...
WHEN I had to find an outfit to wear to host the 2019 Costa Book Awards, I knew exactly what I wanted: lots of pink sequins.
I favour a sparkly frock, and a chance to give my legs an airing, since they have fared well over the years.
But I didn’t worry about traipsing along the High Street or trawling websites to find just the right dress, either. I simply decided to sew my own.
Using a Vogue pattern, I cut out the pieces from a bolt of pink material. Then I pinned, sewed, broke needles and sweated over my sewing machine.
As I arrived on the red carpet, I couldn’t help but adopt a smug expression when the gossip columnists asked where I’d got it from. ‘I made it myself,’ I announced casually.
However, it was not all smooth sailing. Not only did the tricksy sequined material break every single one of the special needles on my new Brother sewing machine, but sequins were scattered throughout the flat and turned up in nearly every mouthful of food I ate for the next month.
Still, I love wearing things I’ve made to fancy dos. When I told friends I had begun making my own clothes three years ago, I didn’t expect them to be so disbelieving. I knew what I liked, and was fed up with trawling shops trying to find dresses with long sleeves and pockets in a nice fabric.
For ages, I had been buying clothes then adapting them by putting in darts, adding extra seams to change the shape and maybe dyeing them. One day, as I made a fiddly job more complicated by sewing over my finger, I thought, ‘Let’s go back to basics.’
So I bought fabric from a secondhand shop, hoisted my ten-ton Fifties sewing machine onto a table at home, and made a dress from scratch.
I’d forgotten how much I loved sewing. All worries fade away as you try to get the most from the fabric, checking you’ve cut out all the pieces and done the tailor’s tacks.
My mum was hugely chuffed that I had got back into dressmaking. She made all our clothes until we became surly teenagers. She bought me a little Singer when I was still at primary school. I used it to make pin cushions, needle cases, badly fitting tops for my doll Susan and flimsy handbags.
But I was almost put off for life by our domestic science teacher’s insistence that we learn French seams (don’t ask) and tacking — where instead of pinning then sewing, you go through the extra slog of loosely stitching the pieces together to check it will work. Then, however, I discovered that in an era where clothes were designed for whippets or egg timers — the Sixties and Seventies were a hard time to be curvy — I could avoid the bit where I burst into tears while breaking a zip, and make something for myself.
As a cub reporter with limited funds, I made clothes out of necessity, and learned to improvise rather well.
I remember one summer in the Eighties, while working at radio
Trent in Nottingham, I was rushing round the shops trying to find a party dress for that night.
At 5pm, having failed to find anything affordable that I liked, I bought a pattern and a few yards of fabric from the market. I raced home and made a dress with three-quarter sleeves and a fishtail back in three hours. I didn’t measure anything, finish the seams or check the tension on the stitching, which meant a sudden fear, while on the dancefloor, that the dress would explode at any moment. Luckily, it all held together.
But I stopped making my own clothes when I moved to London in 1987.
I got a job at Thames News and moved to Sky News within a year — I was up at 3am and dead on my feet by 5pm.
Instead of spending weekends sewing, I explored the city. Then I was off to GMTV, where I met some brilliant seamstresses in the wardrobe department who could do a nip and tuck on anything you’d bought, far outstripping my own skills.
As the years passed, my old sewing machine gathered dust, until I was challenged to make a dress from scratch by presenter Matthew Wright after boasting about my abilities. I’m glad he did because I’ve got back into it in a big way.
Nowadays, I trail my fingers over a fabric and buy a couple of metres with nothing in mind, but how nice it is. Which is how I came to make a dress with two different silk prints recently, having bought an insufficiency of either while in Jaipur, India.
Who knew I’d be ahead of the curve? The next summer the clashing look was everywhere.
I’m also a sucker for a dressmaker’s pattern, particularly those made by Easy Vogue, McCall’s and Simplicity.
Just the other day, I came across an old pattern for an Issey Miyake jacket which I made in black herringbone and wore with everything until my car got stolen with the jacket in the boot. But the great thing is, if I really wanted to, I could remake it.
Also, advertise a skill, and friends will ask if you can make them something. I’m always delighted, but overcommit.
Olympic gymnast Suzanne Dando and I have identical dresses after I accidentally cut out two of every pattern piece while making mine (I’d doubled over the fabric). Actress Emily Woodward has a dress made of blue stretchy fabric which I bought on a spa trip to Bath.
HOWEVEr, I still haven’t made the olive tunic for Mariella Frostrup that was supposed to be a present last year. I got sidetracked with a green dress for my agent’s birthday and a painting apron for comedian Jenny Eclair. The result is I have leftover or untouched fabric everywhere, and not enough time to make what I want. Some will say, ‘Why bother?’ You can get anything on the High Street or internet for very little these days.
But can you get a dress with pockets, trumpet sleeves and a high cotton quotient? Not at the prices I pay for material. And even if you could, it’s wonderful knowing no one else will turn up in the same item.
My latest creation involved a lot of jiggery-pokery as I bought a bargain remnant for £12. It was not big enough, and I ended up making a sleeve from three pieces of fabric. As I get braver, though, I may buy expensive material.
I’ve become my family’s go-to person for make-do-and-mend, and own three darning mushrooms in various sizes. To the uninitiated, they are used for repairing holes in woollens, and I can often be found darning my niece’s hand-knitted socks.
In fact, I’m happy to say my mum’s needle skills appear to be continuing in the next generation. One of my nephews is a high-end menswear designer and we chat for hours about warp, weft or the benefits of a selvedge (a finished edge on fabric that stops it fraying). He and I went shopping for my sister’s Christmas present last year. He choose the melted wool fabric and I made a copy of a Cos top she loved.
At the moment, I’m running up a pair of pale grey linen trousers. They were supposed to be for another person, but I’m accidentally making them for me.
And there’s always the possibility someone might compliment me on them — and I can casually announce I made them myself.