Published in 1943 by the Ministry of Information, Make Do And Mend offered enterprising housewives sustainability advice to keep house and family afloat on war rations. Now, thanks to our current economic situation, this philosophy is once again back in vogue, and the V&A Museum of Childhood, in Bethnal Green, has just opened a new exhibition exploring this trend of reworking and refurbishing existing items to create something new.

Explaining futher about the show, which combines the work of local schoolchildren and contemporary designers, community development officer Teresa Hare Duke says: “I suppose I was thinking of doing an exhibition about sustainable design because there is an awful lot of design that is about reworking and recycling and I just hit on Make Do and Mend as a title that summed it up and then we went into a recession, which was kind of coincidental.”

While the housewives fashioned clothing out of old curtains and drew kohl pencil lines up the back of their legs to look like stockings during the war period, the designers on display here have adapted salvaged domestic and industrial waste to create stylish, quirky new products.

Lou Rota customises old furniture to create beautiful items, from vintage bone china adorned with flamingoes, to a battered French desk given a new lease of life with gorgeous decoupage; Max McMurdo’s hobby of taking everday waste objects and transforming them into highly desirable eco-friendly pieces became a full-time career after winning backing on Dragon’s Den for his shopping trolley chair; and finally Jon Male uses humour in his designs to “transcend the realms of comfort and aesthetics”.

Taking these ideas as a starting point, local schoolchildren from Arnhem Wharf, St John’s and Redlands Primary School, as well as ESOL students from Tower Hamlets College, took part in workshops to create their own recycled products; including old jumper creature creations, cushions fashioned out of plastic waste, car boot sale dining chairs updated with pom-poms and their own version of decoupage, using old copies of the Financial Times to spruce up tired funiture.

“They really get recycling,” Terersa says of the children, “because I suppose they all do it, they have grown up with it.”

So, with all these great reworked products surrounding us, I can’t help but wonder if Teresa is a make do and mender herself?

“I think I must be because I had so many ideas for this exhibtion,” she laughs. “I couldn’t stop myself, and I think it’s quite a rich theme. I do darn my socks, but I do rework things and transform old objects into new, so I have taken an old lampshade and given it a new lease of life and I have patchworked my chairs.”

Make Do and Mend runs at the V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambrdige Heath Road, London, until Sunday, November 15. Details: 020 8983 5200 or www.museumofchildhood.org.uk