School: Clonlara
- Location:
- Cloonlara, Co. Clare
- Teacher: Dll. Ó Heoghanáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0585, Page 054
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- XML School: Clonlara
- XML Page 054
- XML “Clothes”
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- The tailor in the district is Mr Whelan. He makes clothes in his own house. In former times the tailor went around from house to house and spent a week or a fortnight in each house according to the amount of work he had to do. In those days it wasnt usual for the tailor to keep materials for sale. It is usual now for the drapers to keep a tailor in the house or take the customers measure and send the clothes away to be made and this has left the country tailors idle. It is all shop stuff they use for clothes in this side of the country.
Long ago people wore home spun tweeds for suits and overcoats. These were spun at home from their own wool with a spinning wheel. This is like a form with a wheel as big as that of a car at one end. They spun the thread for the stockings on the same wheel knit the stockings at home and dyed them with a home made dye.
There was a smaller wheel called the linen wheel for spinning flax. From this the women made shirts of dowlas. Of the coarse part of the flax called tow they made ticking and sheeting.
Long ago the tailor sat with his legs crossed on a high table where he cut the material.
He used a big scissors a tape measure a thimble(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Chrissie Murphy
- Gender
- Female
- Collector
- Kitty Galvin
- Gender
- Female
