The "We Have All The Time In The World" Blouse

Although my childhood was largely in the 1970s I wouldn't exactly describe myself as a Sixties / Seventies flower-child. I lacked the requisite length of hair for a start, in which to insert a strategic flower, when an appropriate opportunity presented itself, and to wear loose and long, like Françoise Hardy or Carly Simon. My mother, for some unknown reason, didn't approve of jeans and we were never allowed any as children so I never wore frayed bell-bottoms, topped with a cheesecloth blouse, with puffy sleeves and broderie anglaise lace panels.

Bare feet were also a no-no for wandering about in and flip-flops were regarded as "silly and dangerous" - "no proper support for the feet and liable to cause you to trip", according to my mother. I can't tell you how much I longed for a pair of plastic, flowery flip-flops, aged nine or ten, but there was nothing doing! My mother much preferred to spend her money on sensible sandals for my sister and myself, to be worn with ankle socks. I have taken against ankle socks ever since.

One summer I was so desperate for the forbidden flip-flop that, while my mother's back was conveniently turned, I cut up a pair of old slippers (my childhood "happy snipper" tendencies clearly to the fore again!) and glued a strap made out of an old mackintosh belt in place, to produce a makeshift homemade pair. I thought they were marvellous and click-clacked around the garden all day in them until the glue gave way and my glamorous flip-flops were no more!

Perhaps because all this left an element of unfulfilled longing for the accoutrements of hippiness, as an adult, I have indulged my longing for some of these things, certainly for flip-flops and longer hair, although I never wear it loose because of its deeply regrettable tendency to curl on me. I have been known to stick the odd flower in it, however, and I like to walk barefoot. I live whenever possible in jeans and more recently I have discovered in myself a longing for a flower-child-blouse with hippy notes to it. Not cheesecloth, but not far off it and with the requisite broderie anglaise lace trimming.

I actually completed most of it about six months ago but then, over the winter, it lingered, unfinished, with the odd pin dropping out of it periodically while it drooped slightly sadly, on a hanger, on the back of a door. With the arrival of Spring and sun in the last few days, I suddenly had an imperative urge to finish it and here it is.

It's a genuine vintage pattern from the late Seventies, or early Eighties perhaps - McCalls 4031

(found on Ebay in the course of a flower-child-blouse-hunt) - which I chopped up to create patchwork panels out of three odd half metres of fabric I'd bought in a mix-and-match set of prints just because I loved them.

Not enough to make the whole blouse on their own, I added a metre of a contrasting dark blue print to eke them out. The bottom hem is edged with some genuine seventies lace hoarded in my sewing basket since I was about ten - does this make it genuine vintage lace? I think it might, if not antique!

There wasn't quite enough to edge the entire hem as well as fill in the gap below the neckline which I had inadvertently slashed too far. (Eek! Why don't you read the instructions more carefully, Mrs T?!) But I managed to stretch it with a small amount of a different (also vintage 1970s) lace, inserted unobtrusively at the side of the hem where it doesn't show very much.

I've called it after Louis Armstrong's famous number "We Have All The Time In The World". We don't have all the time in the world, of course; as James Bond and his girl didn't at the end of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", where the song made its 1969 début, but it reminds me that sometimes "having time" is not about having unlimited hours but about choosing it and revelling in it for the moments it lasts and wearing this blouse in the sudden April sunshine makes me feel that.

I know it's just a bit of clothing but sometimes wearing something that speaks strongly to oneself can make a big difference to how one feels and this does it for me. It's a little bit hippyish and flower-child-like and gives me the feeling, possibly illusory I grant you, of time spent, without one eye on the clock, and dreamily drifting, barefoot (or flip-flopped, of course!), among flowers and by still waters with time just to be.

You can subject any straightforward shirt pattern to the chop-and-patchwork principle - just remember that each time you cut a section, you need to add on an additional seam allowance to both sides of the cut pattern pieces. A pattern using essentially simple linear shapes is easiest and personally I'd eschew anything cut on the bias to divvy up in this way but it's a fantastic way to use bits of fabric you love, even if you haven't got enough of any one fabric to make a whole garment. It's also a good way to use a fabric that is too expensive to buy in large quantity, but affordable when in small amounts and mixed with other cheaper fabric.

A couple of further tips if you think you might give something similar a go. Think about how the panels will work together when made up, when you choose where to place your fabrics, ie don't cut your best showcase fabric into panels that will end up hidden round the back of the garment and don't make the patches too small or it will become very fiddly and also fabric-hungry because of all the extra seam allowances.

Might chop up a skirt pattern next and acquire some cheesecloth!