Mending Monday - Long Lining Skirt Problem

This week's Mending Monday has been a long time coming. I bought this skirt at Macy's a year or so ago and I just loved it. It's got a kind of linen/denim look, but it's gray and it's actually a cotton. Plus it's one of the only pencil style skirts that actually fits we well. Cute right? It has 4 buttons at the waist and a short zipper below them. Plus it has pockets!

I wore the heck out of this skirt, but one day I got something on it and had to wash it. No problem, I thought. I followed the washing instructions on the tag, washed in cold and dried on low, but I was really bummed next time I went to wear it...

The outer fabric shrunk! Apparently the fabric wasn't pre-shrunk at the factory - big surprise, right? If it had shrunk all over, it wouldn't have been a problem as it still fits me even being a smidge more snug. The problem is that this skirt has a lining, and the lining did not shrink with the outer fabric, leaving the black fabric hanging unevenly out of the bottom hem when I wore it. No bueno! I put this skirt in the mending pile at least 8 months ago and have not looked at it since. Well, no more!

I folded the lining hem over about 1/3 inch and stitched it all the way around. I think that loading the bobbin on my machine took longer than the actual sewing of this guy.

No more showing! Love it. This is how it looks on now (pardon the horrible coloring in the photo).

Hooray! While I was clipping my threads, I noticed that there were a zillion little threads that the factory never clipped either. I guess the manufacturer couldn't pay that additional $0.03 it would have cost for their workers to clip them, so I went around the whole thing with my snips and took care of it. Also, the button holes had white fuzz coming out of the edges (you can actually see it in the before photo above). When I looked closer, it was the white threads from the fabric - they had just snipped in the middle of the button hole and not cleaned up any of the excess fabric in there. So, I took care of that too. Here's the end result!

I'm so happy to have this skirt back in the rotation. I wore it the very next day - it's such a great staple item that goes with everything but is still a little different. I'm really glad to have it back and wearable :)

That's my mending for this week - check back next Monday for another fix!