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Saturday 15 October 2011

Cloth Kits Are Here Again

Back in the day when my children were small - early 70s - Cloth Kits were huge in the UK. You could buy a kit to make a pinafore dress which came ready screen-printed with cutting and seaming allowances on a piece of cloth. So no measuring or estimating, you just cut out the pieces and stitched around the line which said Stitch Here - and in one evening you could run up and look back with pride on a finished item of clothing for your angel.
Then Cloth Kits were bought out by a large concern and somehow got buried - and all the while those who remembered kept muttering, Whatever happened to Cloth Kits...?
On a stitching course at Liberty's of London, I met up with one of the former designers and asked what had happened - the reply was that the concept had had its day - who in the 90s wanted to do this anymore?
Well, it may be true that times have moved on and things change and people want or need different activities. But Cloth Kits is back and does have some rather charming gift ideas - I rather like the charming bag with a screen printed lining which can also be made up as two cushions or pillows and these little spools of Liberty bias binding are simply darlings. Click here to see more Cloth Kit ideas.

3 comments:

  1. I re-found the new Clothkits a few years ago, and have made a couple of their skirts. Nice haberdashery bits too.

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  2. I remember these but here in the US they didn't come as "kits". You could purchase the entire piece off a bolt and have it all ready to be cut and sewn by you in a few hours. I remember doing some stuffed animals for our daughter when she was young. Daisy Kingdom did alot of these patterns. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

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  3. I've just finished one of their dresses for my DD, I'm loving the funky screen prints they're using.

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