Requiem for my trousers - Ta dah!

This is a bad news/good news post.  First the bad news.

My trousers have died.  To be fair, they have had a good innings.  They are nine years old.  Which in trouser years makes them about 112.  These are the trousers that have survived every cull of my wardrobe. Every house move and clear out.  Every makeover and fashion reinvention.

I bought them when I lived in Kosovo.  Think mud and dust in Summer.  I wore flat shoes all the time because the surfaces were all uneven.  And these were the perfect flat shoe trousers.  Good quality linen, a good cut that relaxed rather than sagged around the behind with each wear.  And comfort akin to trackie bottoms.

They then came with me to New York the first time we lived here and I schlepped all over the city in them.

In North Africa they were line dried in searing heat over a couple of years, fading to a kind of colourless grey.  So, when we came back to New York three years ago they came too, but were consigned (most of the time) to house trousers.  A bit too scruffy to be seen out in but too deliciously comfortable to give away.

Every Summer I promised myself would be the last.  But somehow they came out each year for one more go around.

But this year, they have given up the ghost.

First it was a thinning.  But the thinning gave way to a hole, and a dangerous lack of thread in the crotch area (ahem).

So, what to do?  I couldn't quite bring myself to throw them away.  And then I hit on the perfect solution.  I could still sit on the them, sort of....

TA- DAH!  (Imagine a gap in my typing here while I skip around the room.)

I had some heavy cotton fabric with a big repeat in the pattern that I haven't quite known what to do with.

It used to be wrapped roughly around the original horsehair (uncomfortable) cushions that came with this chair found at a flea market years ago.

But the chair had a makeover when we moved to Manhattan and the fabric went to live at the bottom of our laundry basket.  For a very long time.

So, cast off fabric, meet worn out trousers.

A fab new cushion.  My first ever cushion cover.  Do you like it?  Do You?

Now it lives on our sofa bed, looking pleased with itself.  Fits right in.

Even the Queen looks pleased.

So there you have it.  I made a cushion cover.  Hurray!

So, have you recycled your clothes?  Would love to know what you've done with them.

C.x
(The Queens are vintage life magazines bought on ebay and framed by Mr. P.  And the make do and mend is an original photo from stock in 1942.  Did I tell you I love ebay?)