My mum, the self-confessed ‘fabric-holic’
Meet Charlotte Carpenter’s mother, an avid sewer with a background in the RAF.
Surrounded by scraps of fabric, my mother glides about her sewing cabin with all the elegance and flair of a rhythmic gymnast.
‘Looks like Deidre’s at it again’. Outside, the bravest Blue Haze has clambered on top of the hen-house and is scrutinising the flower bed beyond, probably calculating the distance between the chicken coop and her freedom. Above, the slate grey clouds are sulking. It’s a dreary January afternoon but within these four walls, it’s June.
Eyes bright and glasses perched merrily atop half-silvered curls I watch her work, and all of a sudden, I’m transported back to the sofa, a mug of green tea in my hand, watching the latest episode of the Great British Sewing Bee. She’s making a tote bag, butter yellow and royal purple while she jokes, ‘I could never go on the show because I wouldn’t be able to make a bow big enough to satisfy Esme’.
My mother's hobby is a perfect contrast to her RAF background: regimented, systematic, uniform. Nothing out of place. But here, with colourful threads trailing from her sleeve, mislaid pins cushioning themselves in the carpet, and ribbons threatening to slither from the worktop onto the dozing dog below, my mother is nothing is in place. This room, ‘my happy place’, she says, whilst she grins and wields her pink polka dot fabric scissors, is the inside of her head manifested: half-finished projects reside in an ordered mess and stacks of burgundy and turquoise and amber lovingly selected from the shelves at C&H await their turn, counting down the seconds until they feel the first prick of the needle and are transformed into a make-up bag or a cushion cover or another magnificent creation my mother has in mind. Each finished product has a little ‘handmade with love’ label stitched somewhere on it. ‘They’re like my children’, she pats a lavender bag before placing it with the multitude of others. Between them there’s enough lavender to furnish a small garden.
She nods vigorously, ‘Oh I’m definitely a hoarder, a fabric-holic, as well as a chocoholic.’ Mum is indeed well known for her love of Galaxy salted caramel. ‘If I had to give up fabric or chocolate it would be chocolate, without a doubt. It would be difficult, but I’d rather eat carrot sticks for the rest of my life than give up sewing.'
How did it all start? ‘Because I’d always done crochet, cross-stich, tapestry, that kind of thing, as a hobby in the evening, just to relax, sewing seemed to be a natural progression.’ At school, it was a domestic science battle, a cooking vs needlework rivalry – cooking won and my mother went on to be a catering officer in the Royal Air Force. However, after 11 years of service, in 1999, my father was posted to Denmark and Mum admitted ‘I knew I wasn’t necessarily going to be able to get a full-time job while we were there’. Armed with her trusty Bernina and bundles of fabric, she converted a back bedroom of their bungalow into a sewing room and there it began.
‘Your dad made a bench for me out of an old kitchen worktop’, she recalls fondly. Even now, 23 years on, the Bernina is whirring on, happy to be here, and it seems sewing machines are the new diamonds - a girl’s best friend.
However, this particular love story, ‘Rebekah and fabric – a forever romance’, truly began with her grandmother, my 'Mam Mam', while Mum was at boarding school.
‘I’d gone to her house, either for the weekend or an exeat on a Sunday and she gave me a crochet hook and got some yarn and taught me how to start a basic granny square. A granny square with my granny!’. She laughs heartily at her own joke. Her inspiration for sewing ultimately came from this wonderful woman. ‘She was absolutely my role model when I was nine years old. I remember once she made me a waistcoat and matching skirt, in denim blue with a cotton reel pattern, except it wasn’t actually destined for me. Mam Mam had made it for herself, saw a teenage girl wearing an item of clothing made of the same fabric and thought she couldn’t possibly wear the same thing as a youngster, so gave it to me!’
Years later, one of the lectures on a sewing course mum went on was about opening your own business. ‘That really sparked something in me’. It was at this point, on a post-it note, that my mother started brainstorming ideas for a name of a small business where she could showcase her art. Thankfully, she discarded the idea ‘Eye of the needle’, however, I’m puzzled by the thought-process behind ‘Threadwell Crafts’. My mother stares at me as though it’s obvious, her gold sewing machine earrings swinging from her ears. Blushing, she mimes threading a needle. ‘Because you, you thread well…’.
Her all-time favourite fabric designer is Liberty, and it was with these striking floral designs that her greatest sewing achievement of 2021 was made – a stunning quilt for the main bedroom’s king size bed. Quilts seem to be a speciality of hers. She’s currently involved in a project linked with the charity ‘Siblings Together’. She and a group of ladies have formed their own sewing bee and every so often they each design and sew their own block and then join them all together to make a quilt. ‘One of the members has a contact in social services. By making these quilts children are being supported. It’s all about keeping brothers and sisters in contact with each other within the care system.’ They converse via ‘IG’ and mum is especially proud of the disciples she’s gathered through her online identity – ‘The Patchwork Lady’.
Mum’s always been a little bit quirky – her character is paralleled in the tin of assorted buttons on her desk which are currently in a battle with the lid. She’s well known for retreating to the cabin on a daily basis, smuggling yet another load of fat quarters she couldn’t resist buying through the house in a bid to escape the combined eye-roll-and-sigh from her husband, ‘which inevitably happens when he goes through the receipts’ she giggles. Many an evening, you’ll venture to the door of the cabin (wondering if all thoughts of dinner have entirely dissipated from your mum’s head) and see her, swathed in fabric and bopping along in that middle-aged-mother-way mouthing the lyrics to Rick Astley and getting most of them wrong.
Now she’s smiling proudly at the twelfth face mask she’s made today and I’m wondering if the buttons have won, the pins will ever be found and if my mother knows that she herself is my favourite of all her creations.
Charlotte Carpenter, Year 12
Surrounded by scraps of fabric, my mother glides about her sewing cabin with all the elegance and flair of a rhythmic gymnast.
‘Looks like Deidre’s at it again’. Outside, the bravest Blue Haze has clambered on top of the hen-house and is scrutinising the flower bed beyond, probably calculating the distance between the chicken coop and her freedom. Above, the slate grey clouds are sulking. It’s a dreary January afternoon but within these four walls, it’s June.
Eyes bright and glasses perched merrily atop half-silvered curls I watch her work, and all of a sudden, I’m transported back to the sofa, a mug of green tea in my hand, watching the latest episode of the Great British Sewing Bee. She’s making a tote bag, butter yellow and royal purple while she jokes, ‘I could never go on the show because I wouldn’t be able to make a bow big enough to satisfy Esme’.
My mother's hobby is a perfect contrast to her RAF background: regimented, systematic, uniform. Nothing out of place. But here, with colourful threads trailing from her sleeve, mislaid pins cushioning themselves in the carpet, and ribbons threatening to slither from the worktop onto the dozing dog below, my mother is nothing is in place. This room, ‘my happy place’, she says, whilst she grins and wields her pink polka dot fabric scissors, is the inside of her head manifested: half-finished projects reside in an ordered mess and stacks of burgundy and turquoise and amber lovingly selected from the shelves at C&H await their turn, counting down the seconds until they feel the first prick of the needle and are transformed into a make-up bag or a cushion cover or another magnificent creation my mother has in mind. Each finished product has a little ‘handmade with love’ label stitched somewhere on it. ‘They’re like my children’, she pats a lavender bag before placing it with the multitude of others. Between them there’s enough lavender to furnish a small garden.
She nods vigorously, ‘Oh I’m definitely a hoarder, a fabric-holic, as well as a chocoholic.’ Mum is indeed well known for her love of Galaxy salted caramel. ‘If I had to give up fabric or chocolate it would be chocolate, without a doubt. It would be difficult, but I’d rather eat carrot sticks for the rest of my life than give up sewing.'
How did it all start? ‘Because I’d always done crochet, cross-stich, tapestry, that kind of thing, as a hobby in the evening, just to relax, sewing seemed to be a natural progression.’ At school, it was a domestic science battle, a cooking vs needlework rivalry – cooking won and my mother went on to be a catering officer in the Royal Air Force. However, after 11 years of service, in 1999, my father was posted to Denmark and Mum admitted ‘I knew I wasn’t necessarily going to be able to get a full-time job while we were there’. Armed with her trusty Bernina and bundles of fabric, she converted a back bedroom of their bungalow into a sewing room and there it began.
‘Your dad made a bench for me out of an old kitchen worktop’, she recalls fondly. Even now, 23 years on, the Bernina is whirring on, happy to be here, and it seems sewing machines are the new diamonds - a girl’s best friend.
However, this particular love story, ‘Rebekah and fabric – a forever romance’, truly began with her grandmother, my 'Mam Mam', while Mum was at boarding school.
‘I’d gone to her house, either for the weekend or an exeat on a Sunday and she gave me a crochet hook and got some yarn and taught me how to start a basic granny square. A granny square with my granny!’. She laughs heartily at her own joke. Her inspiration for sewing ultimately came from this wonderful woman. ‘She was absolutely my role model when I was nine years old. I remember once she made me a waistcoat and matching skirt, in denim blue with a cotton reel pattern, except it wasn’t actually destined for me. Mam Mam had made it for herself, saw a teenage girl wearing an item of clothing made of the same fabric and thought she couldn’t possibly wear the same thing as a youngster, so gave it to me!’
Years later, one of the lectures on a sewing course mum went on was about opening your own business. ‘That really sparked something in me’. It was at this point, on a post-it note, that my mother started brainstorming ideas for a name of a small business where she could showcase her art. Thankfully, she discarded the idea ‘Eye of the needle’, however, I’m puzzled by the thought-process behind ‘Threadwell Crafts’. My mother stares at me as though it’s obvious, her gold sewing machine earrings swinging from her ears. Blushing, she mimes threading a needle. ‘Because you, you thread well…’.
Her all-time favourite fabric designer is Liberty, and it was with these striking floral designs that her greatest sewing achievement of 2021 was made – a stunning quilt for the main bedroom’s king size bed. Quilts seem to be a speciality of hers. She’s currently involved in a project linked with the charity ‘Siblings Together’. She and a group of ladies have formed their own sewing bee and every so often they each design and sew their own block and then join them all together to make a quilt. ‘One of the members has a contact in social services. By making these quilts children are being supported. It’s all about keeping brothers and sisters in contact with each other within the care system.’ They converse via ‘IG’ and mum is especially proud of the disciples she’s gathered through her online identity – ‘The Patchwork Lady’.
Mum’s always been a little bit quirky – her character is paralleled in the tin of assorted buttons on her desk which are currently in a battle with the lid. She’s well known for retreating to the cabin on a daily basis, smuggling yet another load of fat quarters she couldn’t resist buying through the house in a bid to escape the combined eye-roll-and-sigh from her husband, ‘which inevitably happens when he goes through the receipts’ she giggles. Many an evening, you’ll venture to the door of the cabin (wondering if all thoughts of dinner have entirely dissipated from your mum’s head) and see her, swathed in fabric and bopping along in that middle-aged-mother-way mouthing the lyrics to Rick Astley and getting most of them wrong.
Now she’s smiling proudly at the twelfth face mask she’s made today and I’m wondering if the buttons have won, the pins will ever be found and if my mother knows that she herself is my favourite of all her creations.
Charlotte Carpenter, Year 12