Why aren’t more of us ‘making do’ and mending?

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

 William Morris (British craftsman, early Socialist, Designer and Poet, whose designs generated the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. 1834-1896)

As a craftyholic, I am evangelical about recycling. Being a patch worker and quilter means that I can use the smallest pieces of fabric to make something. Are my quilts beautiful? I hope so. Are they useful? Yes!

Why have I chosen this quote for this blog post? I worry, all the time; it’s like a disease with me. I worry about the small things (that seam doesn’t match) and the big things (why society and economy is going to hell in a hand basket).  Crafters make beautiful pieces, and often they make pieces to sell, so they must also be useful.

But, what worries me more is our preoccupation with collecting more and more ‘stuff’. Often this ‘stuff’ is cluttering up our houses and making us unhappier. This leads me to my main question then, why aren’t more of us ‘making do’ and mending? We throw cheap ‘things’ away and go and buy more cheap ‘things’ to replace them. Our ancestors would be horrified by our complacency and contempt.

People, and I count myself as one of them, get pleasure from shopping.  How has this come to pass as acceptable?  We are quite literally filling our homes with cheaply-made, mass-produced tat. Everyone ends up owning the same old tripe and we develop identikit houses. How blooming dull is that?

There has been a great resurgence and interest in vintage values, such as ‘keep calm and carry on’ and ‘make do and mend’. Is this because it is a jubilee year (God bless her), and we are sentimental for simpler times? Perhaps, people are coming to realise that our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents were right. They were happier. They had skills; they knew and practiced crafts at their elder’s knee. They may have had less ‘stuff’, but does that make them any less advanced than us? I sincerely doubt that.

When you purchase something handmade from a craftyholic, you are making an investment; the time spent in making something both useful and beautiful, and also you are making way for something in your home that no-one else has. You’ve chosen the vintage route, what your forebears would have done. You’ve said no to the throwaway society and economy we have become.

You have helped a beautiful and useful craftyholic continue to thrive.

Mrs Blackberry