[Vella Gonzaga]

Clothes made by mum or nan​

Did your mum and nan make your clothes when you were a kid? Back in the day, kids’ wardrobes were filled with three sets of clothes—play clothes, school clothes, and Sunday’s best for special outings. Boys sported grey short pants, while girls flaunted dresses and cardigans sewn with love and care. So, tell us, what are some of your fondest memories of how kids were dressed back in the day?

Facebook/Australia Remember When​

 

[Rosie2023!]

Being so old, in the WW2 era, money was very tight, my sisters and I were very young. People used to give their cast off dresses to Mum, which were washed, cut down and redesigned for us girls.
Grandma was a huge sewer of these and Mum had the three of us in 2 years and 7 weeks. Life was hard, everything was washed by hand or placed in a copper, out the back,in the “wash house”.
Frankly I do not know how she managed..but my sisters and I are in our 80 s now..we appreciate all that was done for us.
Coralie

 

[featherfour]

My clothes were pretty much always either second-hand from my cousin, or home made by Mum, or really cheap without a brand and I hated it! I hated the tiny pinpricks in my legs as I stood on the kitchen table and Mum pinned up the hem, measuring as I turned, to get it nice and even. I dreamt of owning a pair of jeans with a Levis label on them! I was too dumb to realise the love and effort Mum put into making all those clothes for me.

 

[LynneM]

Mum made all my clothes, knitted all my jumpers, remember going to Myers to pick out patterns for me, which I could choose. She did the same for my brother, even knitting a Beatles cardigan for him, it was so cool. Did not wear a brought item until I worked at age 16, then I could buy my own clothes.

 

[Gsr]

My mum, grandma, aunts were all great at sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery, you name it and they could do it. Mum made all our clothes, both boys and girls, including our underwear. She made school tunics and blazers. I learnt to knit from a very young age and helped mum knit jumpers, cardigans for all the family every year. Us kids all lived in hand me downs and home made clothes until we started work and could buy our own clothes. Mum was a brilliant seamstress, self taught. She made all the wedding and bridesmaid dresses for our weddings and our brothers weddings also. In her later years she decided to attend tafe and do a dressmaking course. She would draft most of her own patterns for us kids clothing, never followed a knitting pattern and neither did I under her guidance but we never had a failure in anything we knitted. I made a lot of clothes for myself even as an adult and my kids when they were young. I loved to knit them jumpers and embroider patterns on them. I was taught how to sew, knit, crochet, and embroider by my mum, and still like to do some of each to keep my skills up. I have taught my granddaughters the basics of sewing and knitting, they are not yet inclined to want to learn embroidery or crochet.

 

[SeniorSnoopy]

As a child, my sister and I always wore home made clothes. My mother was the sewing expert and could make anything she put her hand to and my nanna was the knitter and crocheter. Everyone would comment about how beautiful our outfits were at weddings etc., as mum would make the same outfit for us all but in different colours. Nanna was a beautiful and intricate knitter mastering the most difficult patterns with ease. She knitted an Arran jumper for me and a larger one for my now ex husband. Not a single mistake in either of them and I still have them to this day after 43 years and you'd think that they had just been knitted. She also used to knit a lot of our toys. We both had Humpty Dumpty's just like the PlaySchool one. They both went halves in a knitting machine and they had a ball on that. We had so many cardigans and jumpers, we were the envy of our friends. Mum used to make all my dads work clothes as he was a truckie. She would buy a shirt, unpick it and make the pattern up and then whip him up 5 or 6 shirts in flannelette. And mum would also sit patiently and make all my Barbie doll clothes by hand. I miss those days terribly.