DIY dressmaking is back in vogue.

Despite the fact that kids aren't taught how to sew at their mother's knee anymore – on account of the fact that most mums don't know how to do anything more taxing than sew a button on – sales of sewing machines are going through the roof.

Well, up 50 per cent at Argos, which is near enough.

Bright young things have cottoned on to the fact that making your own not only costs a fraction of the high street price, but also gives you something unique.

Teenagers can also make exactly what they want to wear, rather than what some multi-million-pound corporation abusing the human rights of 10-year-olds in the impoverished Third World dictates.

I would love to learn to sew, but I lack the patience required to do the job properly. I can't stand all that pinning and fitting, undoing and stitching up again.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

I remember my mum sitting at her trusty old Singer for hours of an evening.

It didn't even have a foot pedal; it was one of those you turned by hand and it had a domed wooden case with a little lock on it.

She made me gingham cotton summer dresses and towelling beach things that you pulled over your head and wriggled out of your wet, sandy swimming costume beneath.

They were made with love. But they still weren't as good as my gran's – she made more intricate, smock dresses with matching knickers.

My favourite was white cotton covered in tiny pink rosebuds. I've often wondered over the years what happened to that dress. One of things you can't remember throwing away, but simply disappeared.

They did teach us at school. At Whiston Juniors we all had to make gingham aprons and decorate them with cross-stitch. Mrs Thorpe, who had a big, black, beehive hairdo, showed us how. I've still got my slightly skew-whiff version (apron, not beehive hairdo) somewhere.

And I confess, I used it to win my sewing badge at Brownies. Well, there didn't seem any point in having to make something else. Not when I'd gone to all that trouble.

If the Scouts' motto was Be Prepared, I reasoned that a good Brownie's should be: Here's one I prepared earlier.

My mum still has the felt anemone posy I sewed as a Mothers' Day present around the same time. I like to think she treasures it in much the same way I adore a little stuffed thing bearing a slight resemblance to a teddy bear my son made when he was about eight.

Do they still teach sewing at secondary schools these days? I assume they don't, as that now thread-bare bear was all he ever brought home.

As a teenager at Brinsworth Comp, I honed my skills a little further. All the girls had to make a skirt. I didn't pay attention to what the boys had to make, although I remember they were there because they were forever pricking their fingers, making huge mock howls and pratting about with the sewing machines.

My skirt ended up three sizes too small, I know not how. But my best friend Sarah Meakin had the knack.
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