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?)

Packages (2)

Like most people, I do love a parcel.  And when I got home the other night, there were not one but two cardboard boxes waiting for me.  Mr. P is very good and doesn't tell me when such parcels come so as not to spoil the surprise.  I have to say I would not be so disciplined, and would likely rip into them to have a good rummage inside before ever he had the chance.  But anyway, these parcels were both ebay purchases.  I have not mentioned this before but I love ebay.  We used to live in the desert in North Africa before we came here, and before every holiday, I would go onto ebay, with the result that I always had parcels waiting for me at my sister's house when we went home.  Most of it was stuff I now don't have (what does this tell you...) - summery things and jumpers (who knew you needed jumpers in the desert).  But not housey stuff.  No point in carting housey stuff back to the desert only to ship it on to, well, wherever we were going next.

But now.... Now is an entirely different ebay experience.  Which leads to purchases like this...

... and this...

I am now the proud owner of a pink milk glass cake stand...

...with a beautiful, intricate lacey pattern which will be so easy to clean...

... and which stands elegantly on a pedestal adorned with patterns that look like musical instruments (I gave up piano when I was nine)...

Really I don't know how I have limped along in life without this until now.

AND, a sewing basket....

... with pretty faded fabric on the lid...

... and more shouty fabric inside.  Of course now that I am a seamstress, I will definitely have use for this.  And I haven't a single other box or tin or cupboard or drawer where I could store my sewing things.  No, I'm sure I don't.

Do you ebay?

C.x