Making do

I'm in a bit of a sewing slump at present, I just don't feel like doing any stitching. This hasn't stopped me from buying the odd pattern which interests me, however.

Style 4457

I can't say that I have a pressing need to make a bedjacket, but what caught my eye was this.

Really?

If you were particularly lacking in imagination, there's this helpful illustration to help you along.

Multiple fabrics in use

The same drawing is frugally re-used in the pattern instructions.

At least this suggests day frocks could be used

It's the use of the plural, frocks, that really gets me - with the implication of having a selection of old evening dresses lying around to choose from. Especially as Style, while not one of the cheapest pattern brands, was certainly not up there with Vogue, either.

There's also the small matter of fabric. The suggested fabrics include 'quilted materials'.

Quilted fabric seems to be the preferred choice

However, unless the writer was inspired by this, that seems an unlikely choice for an evening frock.

Vogue cover, possibly 1938

The reference on the pattern envelope to the Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) Orders dates it to 1942 at the earliest, by which time coal was in short supply and a bedjacket needed to be a warm garment. The days of it being a flimsy thing in luxurious fabric for lounging around in a well-heated bedroom were long over.

The questionable value of a bedjacket made from silk satin just adds to the questions I've long had about the Make Do and Mend campaign. I have a copy of the original Board of Trade leaflet from 1943.

Laundry, repairs, re-use, and prevention

There are some useful tips but much of the information in there, such as turning sheets, was already second nature to most housewives. Long before the war, both my grandmothers always did this when sheets became thin in the centre - splitting them lengthways and sewing them back together with the sides in the middle (although I'm told that turned sheets were never used on guest beds!). Both of their husbands were in regular, secure, reasonably well-paid employment, but still the idea of getting less than the maximum use out of something was unthinkable. The fact that the leaflet feels the need to state, not once but twice, that stockings should never be ironed, suggests that women like my grandmothers were not the target audience.

A more likely audience appears in a book I've just read, House-Bound by Winifred Peck. Written in 1942 and set in Edinburgh (here called Castleburgh) in the same year, it opens with Rose, the upper-middle class wife of a city lawyer, attempting to find new domestic staff to replace the two who are about to leave for jobs in a munitions factory. With "girls streaming away from service into the Services" this proves impossible, and Rose resolves to run her home herself, despite having no housekeeping experience whatsoever.

Rose's domestic education is only part of the story, and is limited to cooking and cleaning. From a passing reference to a laundry book, I assume that she sent her washing out. However, it's not hard to imagine that a woman who wondered if soap should be used when washing potatoes would be equally clueless about whether or not to iron stockings.

Lady Peck, as she was by the time of House-Bound's publication, was from a similar background to Rose. I don't know if she shared her heroine's domestic cluelessness, but she certainly would have known many women who did. It seems to me that it was these women, suddenly having to cope without live-in staff and to make things last rather than replace them at the first sign of wear, who were the real targets of Make Do and Mend. Certainly, they were more likely to have "cast-off evening frocks" than any of the women in my family. I would love to know if anyone did actually make bedjackets from such unsuitable materials, or if suggestions like this mainly existed to normalise the idea of 'making do' among women who previously had no experience of anything like it.