Bad Housekeeping

[shewhomust]

I have a purple shirt of which I am particularly fond. It was a present - and I never dare give clothes as gifts, there are so many things that could be wrong: the style, the size, the colour, the something indefinable that means you'd never wear it, even though you can't say why... But I was given this purple shirt, and I love it. It's a very loose weave, purple and black threads, mid-length sleeves, embroidered panels down the front in a shade so close to the fabric itself that you see texture rather than pattern, vaguely hippyish design.

People who are more clothes-aware than I am may already have spooted the snag: loose weave fabric, hippyish design... Whether because the fabric is too loose to take the seams, or because the seams were not well made in the first place, every time I wear it I find a new place where a seam is unravelling, usually for several inches. I wore it twice at the weekend, so yesterday I sat down to sew up the two new gaps.

And realised that one of them was not so new, I'd obviously started to stitch it up before, because there was a needle hanging down the seam on a length of thread. I had managed to go to two sepate events, two fine and varied events - Mick Standen's memorial, and samarcand's barbecue party - with a needle dangling from my clothing. If anyone noticed, they didn't mention it.