Browsing by Subject "clothes"

In this study I examine how textiles were patched and darned in Finland from the 1920s to the 1960s, and how changes in everyday life affected it. Modernization, the following of fashion and the rise of ready-made clothes industry in the 1920s declined into a shortage of textiles and a demand on self-sufficiency during the war years in the 1940s. After the war clothes were bought ready from shops and their value related to people's assets was reduced. Alike, people's attitudes towards textiles and mending them changed. The data for my study consisted of articles from Kotiliesi, Omin käsin and Emäntälehti from 1924 to 1959, contemporary guidebooks from 1920 to 1966 and craft teacher students' samples and notebooks from the the 1920s to the 1940s. In addition I interviewed four women who were born between the years 1918 and 1938, three orally and one with written questionnaire. Because mending textiles has hardly been studied in previous research, I needed to gather the information from many sources. I used different qualitative data analysis and discourse analysis methods to put together pieces of the story. In the 1920s and the 1930s mending textiles was considered almost a platitude. Especially in the countryside the majority of clothes and home textiles were self-made or made to order, although in the cities ready-made clothes could already be purchased. The value of a single cloth was considerable and because of that a lot of time was spent on mending it and different instructions how to darn by hand or with a sewing machine were published in women's magazines and contemporary guidebooks. New textiles were hard to purchase during the depression caused by the Winter War and the Continuation War, therefore good care had to be taken of the textiles already found from homes. Instructions and articles focused especially on advices on how to patch socks. After the war mending of textiles was often emotionally connected to the shortage of the wartime and the amount of mending instructions given in women's magazines decreased. New type of nylon socks reduced the need to darn and patch them, but Kotiliesi still published articles on how to mend different types of clothes, though the instructions were directed to skillful light-fingered women. Publishing articles about mending in women's magazines ended in the 1950s, but the women I interviewed told that they have continued mending until present-day. At the end of my study I consider why mending is still current in the 21st century.