In stitches

Despite my career as a seamstress being cut tragically short, I must admit that I'm pretty nifty with the sewing machine these days. The work in progress here is a new sling for an old deckchair that had been buried in the shed of doom for many years. It's a lovely chair, about 40 years old, with arms - all it needed was a going over with linseed oil (done by Rol) and a new sling (done by me). I think it used to belong to Rol's parents.

We now have a useable deckchair each for lolling about in - and it looks like it's about to tip it down.

Going back to the career as a seamstress: I left school with no plans whatsoever, apart from having a nice six week holiday and then maybe think about getting a job. My mother had other ideas, and got me a job in a sewing factory pretty sharpish.

The fact that I hadn't touched a sewing machine for two years, doing Latin instead of domestic science and needlework at my senior school obviously passed her by. I was 'encouraged to leave' after about 4 months as I was rubbish. The sixteen-row stitched velvet collars were just beyond me. Particularly when I was supposed to be able to do god knows how many in an hour ....