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Even Superwoman loves sewing! She juggled five children with a high-powered City job



Ask any of my five children whether I lovingly hand-stitched their school play costumes years ago and I’m sure they’d smirk and shake their heads. ‘Oh, that was the nanny,’ they’d say.

That’s because they were all tucked up in bed asleep while I sat up well past midnight at the kitchen table. The hours would tick past unnoticed as I fed swathes of material through my sewing machine to make the perfect Little Bo Peep gown with puffy sleeves.

I don’t mind that they took my creations for granted, because the pleasure of sewing was as much for me as for them. Frankly, I would have felt I was letting them down as a mother had I not made them myself.




Riches and stitches: 'Superwoman' Nicola Horlick used to make her own curtains and costumes for her children's school plays

For there is no greater satisfaction than making something from scratch, by hand, for yourself or your family. And when you’ve spent the day taut with work stress, the sensation of a needle pulling thread is oddly therapeutic.

Of course, my children aren’t the only ones who wouldn’t associate a love of cross-stitch, darning and hemming with me, the one-time City ‘superwoman’.


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But just because I’ve had success as an investment fund manager, this does not mean that I don’t take joy in domestic chores. For I refuse to see sewing — or baking or knitting — as the preserve of housewives.

Now, I’m not denying that a demanding job and burgeoning household makes you very busy, but I’ve always managed to squeeze in sewing. Even if it meant it took place huddled over a lamp in the middle of the night.

It seems I’m not alone in taking joy in sewing — be it whipping up outfits or simply attaching name-tags and darning holes — for the pastime has been growing in popularity over the past few years.



Domestic goddess: Nicola, pictured with Georgina, who died in leukemia in 1998, Alice, Serena, Rupert and baby Anthonia, in 1997, took much joy in sewing clothes for her children

In 2009, as the recession started to bite, Tesco reported a 198 per cent increase in sales of sewing machines since the previous year — selling two every minute.

And in these make-do-and-mend days, the rise of SIY (sew-it-yourself) has had people clamouring to join courses in sewing and garment design. We’ve even had a Great British Bake-Off sewing spin-off, The Great British Sewing Bee.

For my part, I first caught the sewing bug when I was 12 at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. There was a class dedicated to textiles, where we sat at a machine each. In my first lesson I was given a garish piece of purple tweed to fashion into something or other. I chose a pattern and followed it fastidiously, cutting it into pieces and stitching it back together.

After a term’s work, I had made myself a racy mini skirt. Not that I ever wore it, because the material was vile, itchy stuff. But I had found the process strangely calming, even then.

My mother, an architect, was never one for such pursuits. There are certainly no homely memories of her stitching by the fireside.

But because of her work, she was very creative and she had a drawing desk where I would sit as a young child and sketch my dream dresses.

Being taught at school how to make these designs a reality was hugely rewarding. From chain-stitching seams to making waistbands and hems, we were taught all the techniques.

This was the early Seventies, when traditional skills like these were still highly prized, even at an academic school like mine. In fact, I got so good that I started making my own costumes for school plays. From the age of five, I’d longed to become an actress so I took part in as many performances as possible.


Thread-apy: Nicola has always found time for sewing, somethign she finds therapeutic

Sometimes I adapted patterns from shops or bought clothes from charity shops and adapted them.

My passion for performing and costume design meant I auditioned for RADA in my late teens, but when I received an offer to read Law at Balliol College, Oxford, I was advised to follow the more sensible path.

Still, I kept up my twin hobbies. Lots of my university friends acted too, and I remember one particularly lavish staging of Twelfth Night to raise money for a local hospice.

My family lived in a Tudor house at the time, complete with a minstrels’ gallery, so it was the perfect place for the play. The role of wardrobe mistress was never the most glamorous or sought-after, so it was left to me to stitch the costumes — dozens of them, including fancy Elizabethan breeches, ruffs and full skirts.

Another time, I made a whole army of Puritan robes for a rendition of The Crucible at university. I’d find fabrics in charity shops or haberdasheries.

As always, it was a case of fitting it around my studies. I’d be reading cases by day, frenetically stitching in my college room by night. But then, like most women I’ve always been a multi-tasker so it didn’t faze me.

It wasn’t until I fell in love with my first husband, Tim, at Oxford, that I abandoned my acting plans. He was bound for the City and I realised that pursuing a more creative path would mean we’d spend less time together.

I might have given up the stage, but I clung on to sewing. After we married in 1984, I turned my attention to making curtains. Tim and I were in the business of doing up flats and selling them on. I would spend days making all the drapes for our properties; it was a pleasure, not a chore.

At that time I was working in the City, so as usual I’d be hunched over my mum’s 1976 Singer at night, rhythmically pumping the pedal. The familiar ‘chatter, chatter’ of the mechanical needle became a comforting soundtrack to those early days as a wife and career woman. When I started having children, the curtains were replaced by miniature dungarees or dresses. This is when I took up my knitting needles, too.

Of course, the majority of my creations were discarded by the children along the way — the most surreal of which being a ‘germ’ costume for my third eldest daughter, Serena, consisting of lurid green puffball skirt and matching tights.

But many are still worn and cherished. I loved that my father always wore the moss green Dr Who scarf I’d knitted him with long tassels. The most valuable, though, is the turquoise sweater I made for my eldest daughter, Georgie, when she was ten. She died of leukaemia two years later in 1998 so it’s very poignant to see her sister Alice, now 24, still wearing it. ‘I love it,’ she told me the other day. ‘It’s such a beautiful colour and so soft.’ She didn’t need to articulate the fact that she draws comfort from it having belonged to her sister.

That’s the beauty of homemade garments: the emotional ties that bind them to you. Just the feel of them can transport you back to treasured times. I gave away my favourite Seventies sewing machine back in 2003. I’d been spending time in Zambia for the charity UNICEF with work when I met an awe-inspiring nun who’d single-handedly set up a school for 600 pupils.



Stitching together: Knitting and sewing is not just for housewives, and is much more than a chore, says Nicola

She showed me around the building, but I was drawn to one room in particular, which contained row upon row of vintage black Singer sewing machines. The nun told me that the pupils made their own school uniforms, and could rarely afford to buy more than one item of clothing.

Back home, I organised for a ship container’s worth of school equipment and toys to be donated to this cause. I told my children to pick out only pristine toys that meant something to them — to set a good example, I gave up my precious machine.

Of course, I was fortunate enough to be able to replace it, but I like to think of the device being put to good use, thousands of miles away.

As my youngest, Benjie, is 13, I no longer sew elaborate costumes, but I do still patch up worn clothes.

Now I have my own film company, Derby Street Films, I take a keen interest in the wardrobe department, too.

Meanwhile, the garment gauntlet has been taken up by my daughter Alice. She’d never really shown much of an interest as a young girl, but when she reached her mid-teens, talk turned to studying fashion.

I was amazed, because I hadn’t even taught her to sew: it’s something she picked up herself, as I had done. I tried to persuade her down the academic route, but she got her way in the end, studying womenswear at the London College of Fashion.

I watched in wonder as she created elaborate outfits for her siblings. My favourite was a white T-shirt on which she’d embroidered the queen of diamonds.

For the past two years the house has been filled with sewing machines of a very different, bulkier kind: Alice is now focusing on leather, making handbags. I’m really proud she’s shown such creativity. In a way, she’s realising my old childhood dream.

I’m glad we’ve left the days when only Jaeger or some exorbitant label would do. Now women are proud to mix Armani with Topshop, or something they’ve stitched themselves. Clothes are seen as an expression of your identity, so what better way to do that than by making your own?

Sewing is not only the perfect antidote to a busy working day, it’s a way of producing something special. So dust off your dressmaker’s dummy, pick up a pin cushion and get stitching!

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