20 Oct 2020

A church fete is looming on my not-too-distant horizon, so this afternoon I briefly ventured into the craft graveyard that I affectionately refer to as the spare room, and had a little look through projects-partially-completed to see what could be achieved.

There were an awful lot of partially completed projects, also a lot of things purchased with the intention of having them partially completed at some stage, and some stuff that for the life of me I don’t know why I purchased them.

Amongst the reasonably sized fabric collection are a variety of things I thought would be good to make shopping bags out of. There is a very large bunch of hessian fabric that I honestly think may be going into the too-hard basket (aka wheelie bin), as I discovered that sewing hessian is more messy than it’s worth.

One of the fabrics I’m zealously hoarding is a Harry Potter print, that I’ve been indecisively trying to work out which partially completed project it will be. Will it be cushion covers? Shopping bags? A shirt, maybe?? There’s Pokemon fabric, Sturt Pea fabric, Panda fabric, Christmas prints, a gorgeous purple print I have made shopping bags out of in the past, but decided that no one but me would appreciate them so I stopped wasting it on something so pedestrian. Instead it lives in the ‘treasured but unused fabric’ collection.

This searching through the fabric supply, however, brought to mind a news headline I saw some months ago about a lady who made a dress out of condoms. Obviously I didn’t read anything more, but I did make note of the headline – just in case I’d ever need to write a bit of literary diarrhoea about it.

So today I did the research. And it’s not just one lady with an oversupply of condoms in her sewing room who decided to put them to creative use – there’s HEAPS of people who figure that condoms are a good material to make dresses out of. And not just dresses!!! There are hats and umbrellas too!!

My brain pictured this person wandering into a pharmacist, wanting to purchase maybe a couple of thousand condoms. Or did this person, conscious of how this might appear to the poor person behind the counter, spread out their purchases over a number of shops, like a panic buyer buying multiple packs of toilet rolls???

A feature of the condom dresses is the colour of some of the outfits. How and where did they source all these lovely multicoloured birth and infection control products from???

My mind boggled. Quite a lot.

And, just in case you were wondering, and even if you weren’t, condoms aren’t the only ‘interesting’ material that people make clothing from. Bin bags, crayons, lettuce, phone books and even slabs of meat have featured as things that creative people have decided were a good idea to make clothing out of. Obviously these are just for show, because surely the lettuce and meat outfits are not going to be multiple use items. Not like the condom dress which is obviously going to be useful for anything from a wedding to a school reunion and then onto your grandma’s 80th birthday. Hopefully Nanna won’t be wearing the same outfit. That would be embarrassing.

I have suspicions about the sturdiness of the fabric used in some of these creations, of course. From what I’ve heard about condoms they are not really effective if punctured by a sewing machine needle, for example. And I really don’t know how the lettuce is attached together, because I tried to tape some lettuce to my fish tank lid the other night (yes, I really did), and believe me lettuce does not adhere to things easily.

I did see a prom outfit created out of duct tape, which would quite frankly be a much better option.

Maybe they should make condoms out of duct tape too?

Just a thought.