While organizing all the memorabilia that comes from military service, I came across his wool uniforms from West Point. Mr. Thrifty's uniforms were always kept in their own wardrobe box that was moved from house to house. I mistakenly questioned the contents one time and asked if we could donate them. Horrors! These uniforms were dear to his heart, so the next step was to figure out how to display them somewhere.....A little bit of history. Did you know that the gray uniforms stem back to the War of 1812? A website claimed that gray came into favor when dark blue wool was hard to come by. Have to ask Mr. Thrifty if that is true.
To be perfectly honest, could I take one pair of the wool pants and create a novelty object?
The stripe had a distinctive ribbing effect to it.
Initially, I cut off the hem so the seams would not be bulky.
Another story comes to mind. My Grandmother no matter what she did always used every bit of anything she was working with. No matter if it was the butter wrappers I found in her refrigerator when I purchased her house(she used them for greasing pans for baking) or scraps of fabric, which she wound into this ball. I think it is a treasure! If you look closely at the strips, she sewed them together on the sewing machine. When she would wrap packages in brown paper, she would use this fabric strip ball to tie up the package instead of using scotch tape. So I believe that through her, I carry on the tradition of 'waste not, want not'.
I'm sure part of it was living through the Depression. On the other hand, my Grandfather, a butcher by trade and part owner of 2 grocery stores with his brothers, would bring home the leftovers for Grandma to make dinner. She used to say, "We use everything but the squeal!" I believed it when I saw her pull homemade head cheese out of her fridge one day. It was a loaf that had an agar substance congealed around what I thought were brain parts. It almost made me gag. What a funny memory. Anyway, back to my project.
So the hem is cut off and I sewed under one seam and made a bookmark out of it to go on a favorite book in his office. I know Grandma would be so proud of me.
To begin with, I cut off one of the legs on the pants.
All I needed to do was turn the cut fabric, turn it inside out, sew one seam, invert it, stuff it and sew the other side up.
And the final product...Mr. Thrifty's very own lumbar pillow.
Placing the new lumbar piece in the wing back chair gives it more character. How easy was that?
Stay tuned for the last of the West Point office projects.
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