Sweet Sorrow

I keep Miss Teen's cut out patterns - those that I want to re-use - hanging on hooks in the sewing/guest/Miss Teen room.  Each set of pieces is on its own pattern hanger, and then they are hung on one of the hooks put up for the purpose.  Today I took them all down, as she's outgrown them all now. 

 I was a little sad, as she's at the Teen stage where she wouldn't be seen dead in home made clothes,  she has to wear whatever is regarded as "in",  and has a fairly limited colour palette now (compared to her younger self).  I hope that she regains some of her joys of colour and pattern when she gets over the teenage phase. 

I remembered that I had stashed the older patterns somewhere,  so I had a look in the boxroom  and found them,    all stored in an A1 clear drawing pocket,  stashed behind the filing cabinets, in a very awkward to reach place. They go back to age 8!

I kept them in case I wanted to make something for another girl, or in case my brother wanted to have a go at making something for his granddaughters.   And I also kept them because I had carefully stapled fabric to each pattern, so I knew what item had been made with what pattern and for what age.    Some of the patterns had many bits of fabric attached.   I'd helpfully labelled the pouch so I could see, by age,  what patterns were in there.  I'd even gone to the trouble of putting the youngest patterns (and labels) on one side, and the Age 10 and labels on the other side.   The age 10 patterns had lots of hand written notes,  about what order to do the construction in,  what worked, what I'd do differently,  what the fit was like.   They made me smile.

I prepped additional labels for Age 12 and Age 14.  I carefully removed the pattern hanger from each pattern,  and clipped the pieces together using a Rexel supaclip, and then I typed the name into my labelling software.  I laid the clipped together pattern on the bench, and as I worked through the patterns, the stack grew bigger.  

Eventually,  I was done.  I slid the huge pile into the bag, putting the 12 and 14 on the same side as the age 10. I printed the labels, stuck them on.   I felt sorry for the pattern hangers, it's back into a drawer for them.  

The folder is now ready to go back behind the filing cabinet.  I might show it to Miss Teen before I put it away. 

It's likely to be a long time before it sees the light of day again :-)

EDITED TO ADD:  Miss Teen was interested that her patterns had been taken down,  but not particularly interested in reminiscing.   Sad face. Still, I probably wouldn't have been interested at her age, either.