My Cabinet

 

This rather un-beautiful image captures part of my very own Cabinet a.k.a. my hoard or stash of valuable stuff that I’ll be using to make items for The Cranford Cabinet. Whereas the inspiration for Cranford Cabinet came from my grandparents as explained here, and theirs consisted of precious things like milk bottle tops, newspapers, jam jars and cleaned bits of tinfoil, mine is almost all fabric.

The fabric in these boxes represents most of the offcuts saved from the best part of two decades of made-to-measure clothes making for the men of London and beyond on behalf of the business I own with my partner Iain. Most of our garments are made in Europe and we didn’t have to but we’ve always requested the fabric offcuts be sent to us with the finished items so we could alter and repair our clients’ clothes with the original cloth over time. All so well intended yet the Cabinet has expanded much quicker than it’s been used…

Enter the Covid pandemic and the accelerated cultural change that has seen people dressing more casually and working from home with the impact being that Iain and I now operate our tailoring business part-time at the moment as opposed to full-time pre-2020. The pandemic upheaval was pretty shit for everyone and I can’t quite understand how at one point I was performing five jobs without imploding (it was a close run thing), but I have learnt one* useful thing from it that people will pay me money for sewing and that they have been kind to say nice things afterwards.

I’ve sewn for myself since 2010 and during the pandemic started doing clothing alterations and commissions as part of my new portfolio career. This led me to thinking how to use what I’d already accumulated in my Cabinet and allow it to be used, valued and enjoyed by others as it really ought to be.

  • that was a fib, I can also now pour decent pints of beer at speed and I’m pretty good at making wedding corsages too

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Series 1: Making