pondering a second skin

from gathered fragments

I remember the first time I wrestled with a pattern. It was in Form One at PLC in Melbourne. I loved that school, despite being excluded from the choir on the basis of my skin colour and that we always had to wear every component of our school uniform (to and from school) because otherwise the dear old ducks who had themselves once been pupils at the same institution and who lurked behind countless lace curtains in the houses that lined the backstreets along which I tottered home would telephone the school and report us. Simply swinging your summer boater by its elastic could get you a lunchtime detention knitting six inch wool squares that would be sewn into blankets destined for the destitute (not the local ones mind you, but those somewhere in far places where Presbyterian missionaries were busy instilling the Fear of God and singing Lead Kindly Light).

I can still picture the informing blue-rinsed elders lifting their heavy black Bakelite telephones and solemnly dialling the school, impatient with the chromed circular dialling ring with the holes that determined the chosen numbers clicking back slowly every time. Running the long black concertina chord between their twitching fingers. Anxiously describing the misdemeanour :: slumped socks, swinging hat, tossed beret, no gloves, loosened tie and so forth. Hardly cardinal sins, but I suppose they provided excitement in an otherwise fairly mundane existence. I am fairly sure they didn’t actually know me by name (the older women who lived close to us were all sweethearts and in my memories are much like Miss Marple as played by the adorable Joan Hickson) but they were very good at giving descriptions, as was the school secretary at pinpointing exactly which students was breaking the rules in the particular geographic location.

I often wonder how many knitted blankets eventually made their way overseas. If they’ve survived the years they would make a marvellous exhibition :: the patches not quite lining up, the wild choices of colour, the bodgy stitching, perhaps a few mends. But I digress. I was going to talk about following a pattern. The handcraft teacher began the year with an ambitious plan that involved tie-dyeing a piece of calico cloth using those horrid little tins of Dylon dye, that are chemically composed so that they add colour no matter the composition of the fibre being dyed. First she made us hem the calico by hand. This took several weeks. Then we washed it in buckets of hot water out in the playground. There was the tying of resists (more weeks). Finally she (very cleverly) sent us home with our cloth and a note for the parents (well, to be honest, for the Mothers) instructing them that they should supervise the acquisition of the dye and the colouring of the cloth. I dyed mine black, which did nothing to elevate me in the eyes of the teacher (or the school). Most of my classmates chose pink.

Opening the resists was great fun. It was my first experience of shibori (though the technique was not given that name at our school). I remember tying all of my pieces of zebra striped string into one long length and making a kind of finger-knitted snake from them.

Our next task was to choose a pattern. My mother (who had a long history of interfering in my school projects) decided I would attempt a sleeveless mini dress that had a collar (have I mentioned how much I dislike stiff collars?) and was secured at the front by a series of laces and about a thousand fiddly eyelets. The sort of thing that a person who had to earn a living by, shall we say “unfortunate means”, would likely have worn, probably with thigh-high boots. There was some resistance from the teacher, but Ma prevailed. I would have preferred to make a pair of overalls but that was apparently not an option.

First our teacher made us iron the paper pattern which was not a brilliant idea really, as ironing paper makes it brittle and reduces its life. Now I know we would have been far better off crumpling and recrumpling the pattern pieces and then smoothing them out by hand. It would have made them far easier to manage. Then we had to pin the pattern to the cloth. Woe betide the student who found a better arrangement than the one suggested on the packet. I found it a bit distressing that some of the nicest bits of pattern on the cloth had to be cut away, and this is why these days I prefer to make my garments from undyed cloth and finish all the stitching before they are bundled into a dyebath.