Mending Mending Mending

A few weeks ago, I found myself a wanting to sew but not wanting to get involved in any big projects. I also had a decent mess going in my sewing room that I didn't want to make worse with all the relocating of items that goes into a new project. Oddly enough, I actually decided I was in the mood to do some mending! This is extremely rare, so I decided to go with the flow and see what all I could get fixed up. About 45 minutes later, I had this pile ready to go back into use. Not bad, eh? 

Isn't it funny how most of us don't like mending? I've read several other bloggers say they would rather start an entirely new project than pick apart an old one to mend it. I'm not quite that staunchly against it, in fact I love the personal satisfaction that goes along with saving something and wearing it again - particularly if I went to all the trouble to make it in the first place. I just have to be in the right mood to actually do any mending. My mending basket overflowed before I moved in July, but I just kept adding to it. So what did I pull out of that bin and make wearable?

First up was my Southern Lady Plantain Top that I made back in 2015. This was an unplanned refashion that I just really wanted to make on Labor Day weekend, but the only thread I had that was an appropriate color was heavy duty button thread. In my naïveté, I thought this would be fine. It wasn't. Even in the original post I mentioned how it was scratchy on my arms with that thick thread in the bobbin. This eventually annoyed me so much that I exiled this shirt to the bin even though I love the shirt itself. This time I had olive green thread on hand, so I was able to redo the twin needle hem and put my standard woolly nylon thread in the bobbin. So much more comfortable! Time will tell if this is enough to make the shirt wearable or if I will need to change out the thread in other areas like the neckband. For now, I'm just happy to have this awesome shirt back in rotation - and just in time for the fall colors to look appropriate :)

Since I had the twin needle already set up, my next project was my Deep Teal Boogie Shirt. I have constant issues with hems coming undone. I've even tried tying the bobbin thread together, but it's no use it seems (any tricks out there?). This hem came out a while ago and I had been wearing it anyway, lol. I often tuck this shirt in, so it didn't really bother me. I finally pulled it all out and redid it - here's hoping is stays in better this time!

Next up was my Gertie's Cherries Sorbetto. This top has been in my closet since 2015, yet I have only worn it maybe 3 times since it was too short due to lack of fabric. I just couldn't bare to part with it since I love the fabric. Recently I tried it with my Pippi Pinafore though and it was perfect! The shirt stays tucked in with my pinafore, so there was no worry that it is technically a little too short. I wore it, then decided to wash it and hang it to dry. This would've been fine HAD I ACTUALLY FINISHED THE SEAMS! What the heck? I don't know if I used pinking sheers to no avail or if I just completely forgot to do anything to the seams whatsoever, but when I pulled it out of the wash it was a frayed mess on the insides. Now that I have a serger, I just went down each seam I could get at and serged the seam allowances. The sleeve seams were too small for me to get the serger onto, so I just used fray check there. I'm hoping this isn't too little too late now that I have finally found a way to wear this top. Time will tell!

Since I was on a roll, I finally tackled this store bought eyelet skirt. A few years ago I caught the back on something at work and ripped a big hole through several of the eyelets. I kind of wish I had taken a before photo to show - it was super obvious, plus I didn't want any further ripping or unraveling. I always liked this skirt, so I just chucked it in my mending basket until now. To fix this, I did the same thing I usually do to fix sheets. I used tiny pieces of fusible interfacing on the back to hold the ripped sections together and not be visible through the holes. Next, I dropped the feed dogs on my machine and used my free motion embroidery foot to just go to town over the ripped areas. I like to make sure I go back and forth in one direction first and then go back and forth perpendicular to the first stitches to mimic the weave of the fabric. Since the fabric is white and it's so busy with eyelets, the repair just fades into the rest. I'm really happy with how this turned out and it even survived a trip through the washer and dryer.

The final items were just silly little things. First was sewing a flower thing back on a baby sock (unpictured) - that sock was brand new and it fell off during the first wear! Good thing I can sew - that baby ain't coming off now. Then I pulled out possibly my oldest item for mending - this tie for my husband. I don't remember where we got this, but he always liked it and used to wear it quite often until the back look came unfastened from the tie many years ago. This took seriously less than 2 minutes to sew back down and I even made sure to secure the other side just in case it was close behind. Isn't it ridiculous that it took me so long to fix this? No excuses, man. This was just silly.

So I spend somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes on all these items and that included all the machine changes to accomplish each repair. Now I have 6 items to add back into the family rotation :) Here's hoping it doesn't take me as long to do the rest of the mending in my basket!

FO: (Altered) Maroon Skirt

So, I have a cute new skirt ... that I didn't make, lol. I picked this up at a thrift store probably a year ago, and I finally grabbed it out of the pile to figure out my minor adjustments. Just to show you, originally it looked like this:

Isn't that a sexy photo? You are so welcome. The skirt is clearly from the late 1980s judging by the weird length and the tag style. It has elastic across the back waistband, which I originally hated when I purchased it. When I bought this skirt, I had every intention of making a big time alteration like I did on my navy button down skirt, but when I pulled it out and saw that it already fit fine, I decided to take the easy way out and just make it shorter. I tried the skirt on and just pinned it up until I liked the look of the length, then ended up cutting off 9 inches(!) from the hem. Then I just turned under 1/4" and then another 1" and stitched it down.

I checked my thread racks and didn't have anything close to the color I needed, so I perused my hoard of antique wooden spools of thread - I have an inexplicable urge to purchase all wooden spools of thread at thrift stores even though I never use them. I believe I read somewhere that thread gets brittle with age, so now I have nightmares of all my seams spontaneously splitting open, ha ha. Anyway, I happened to have two different spools of thread that matched this really well. One of the threads was slightly heavier than the other, so I used that in the bobbin. I had just barely enough thread :) Hooray for not having to go out to buy thread!

So now I have (what I believe is) a very cute knee length skirt that I will wear the heck out of :) I love the pockets in particular, and I love the fullness. And I know these pictures make the front seem longer than the back, but I just must have stood weird - I swear it's level.

In reality, I never wear anything tucked in, so this is how this skirt will look out in the wild. Not quite as retro looking this way, but I still like it. Also, I have yet to figure out any other colors I can wear with this skirt but white or black. Maybe navy, but I don't have any solid navy skirts, so we shall see. This thrifted white button down does the job well for now.

So, since this post kind of feels like a cop-out as it was such a minimal amount of sewing, I figured I'd bore you further with reports on some mending I finally took care of, lol. 

I purchased these awesome dragonfly embroidered stretch twill capri pants at a thrift store and I didn't notice that they had two little holes until the first time I wore them. At least they were only $0.16, right? So, I finally decided to sew up the little holes. I just grabbed some khaki thread and pulled the holes closed. Done! Also, I caught my Golden Afternoon Renfrew on a door at work and ripped a little hole in the hem band. I was not happy at the time, but it was a fairly small hole, so I just used some sort-of-not-quite-matching thread and sewed it up. It's a busy enough pattern that you wouldn't see it unless I pointed it out, and that's good by me. I haven't worn this in probably 4 months, so it's nice to have it back in rotation :)

The last "alteration" I made was on these capri pants. I bought them at a thrift store for $0.16 (bag sales are wonderful things), and they fit great but I hated the cuffs. I know cuffs are supposed to be in or something, but I think they look pretty dumb, not gonna lie. Thankfully these were just barely tacked up at the top, so I just took a seam ripper to it and ironed it down with the clapper to help minimize the crease. I learned the clapper trick in the Tailoring Ready-To-Wear class on Craftsy. When you have a hem that was factory pressed, you just steam the living daylights out of it and press the clapper on it and it will minimize the original pressing line much more than just the iron alone. I'm sure it will level out with a washing or two as well. Now I have a pair of capris I will actually wear :)

So, I guess the moral of this post is that sometimes all things need is a really basic alteration or fix to be wearable. Three cheers for less work! Yay!

Summary:
Skirt: thrifted, $1.00
Notions: vintage thread, thrifted, $0.25
Hours: 1 from thought to finish (including searching for thread, lol)

Saturday Sew-A-Thon: Mending At Long Last

I've found myself in a strange situation for the past two weekends. Now that my husband's work schedule has him working on Saturdays, I have the whole night to do whatever I want ... so after I catch up on reading blogs, I have to decide what to do with my time. At first I hem and haw, but if there aren't any family b-day parties to attend, I end up wanting to sew. 

This past Saturday, I started by altering my Classy Parisian Top. An hour later, I started searching my mending basket for inspiration on what to come next. My sister bought my nephew some new jeans the next size up, but they ended up too long - by more than you could really just scrunch up at the ankles without him tripping over. She wanted me to just cuff them on the outside so we could just let the hem out when he grows into them (which let's face it, that will be in maybe a week and a half, lol). This was a very easy alteration, but I had to do it by hand. Kids certainly have tiny pant leg diameters, so much so that I couldn't fit it in my machine. I made sure to line up the top stitching so at a glance you don't even see the cuff. This way, we can just run a seam ripper up there and it's like this alteration never happened.

Next on the mending agenda was to finally tackle this skirt I've only worn maybe twice. My mom got it for me as part of my Easter Outfit about 3 (maybe 4) years ago. I wore it that day, maybe once more, only to have the blind hem come completely out in the wash. That was literally the only problem with this skirt, and I just never did it til now. Shameful, I know. I think about a year ago I actually bought the matching bright red-orange thread. Still never did it.

The truly sad part of this fix is that I think it took all of 10 minutes and that was including winding a bobbin and ironing. My machine makes blind hemming completely mindless and it comes out great every time. Love it! Just look at that hem :) Now I can finally wear this again. After all this time, I think I can count this as a new skirt, he he.

After this fix, I grabbed one of my oldest WIPs in my closet and spent the rest of my night on it. You'll be seeing it very soon :)

Mending Monday: Taking In A Skirt With Pleats and a Side Zip

Yes, I'm aware it is actually Tuesday, lol. I had this ready to go but didn't get to take an 'after' picture until this morning. So here goes!

I know the title is a little intimidating, but it will make sense as you read on :) This skirt has been in my possession for around 3 years now. I got it at a thrift store and wanted to adjust the fit. At the time I didn't realize how complicated this alteration would be, but didn't have the know-how to do it. So, it has hung in my closet ever since.

Cute, huh? It's actually just a Mossimo brand skirt from Target, but it is surprisingly well made. Anyway, what needed to be changed you may ask?

It was a size 20W! Not that I'm a size 6 or anything, but this was way to big on me - it wouldn't even stay up at all, lol.

To figure out how much to adjust it, I put the skirt on and held it up where I wanted it to sit. I pinched the excess together and stuck pins into the seam where the new seam would need to go. Then I took it off and measured the distance between the 2 pins. I know the picture looks like 4.25" in the picture, but the fabric was a little ripply there - it actually needed about 5" taken out! Now, when I bought this I thought that I knew that it had a side zipper, so I thought I would just take it in at the other side seam and call it a day. This would have been a fine plan ... if the skirt didn't have pleats across the front. If I just took it all from the one side, it would have shifted the pleats and looked ridiculous. So, I decided to take the plunge and rip the seams open and get to work doing things the right way.

The more I dug into this skirt, the more interesting/complicated it got. The zipper cam out no problem, except I did slip and rip the fabric - but it was in the section that would be cut off anyway so it was ok. Once the actual side seam was open, I had to rip out the enclosed waistband. The waistband not only functioned as a waist band, the seam there is top stitching that holds the paper-bag style skirt on. So it had to look nice when I put the stitching back :)

Next came marking my new stitch lines. I had to divide 4 so that I could take it in evenly on all the fabric edges. This meant that each side came in 1.25" from the previous stitch line. I marked it in chalk, put the zipper back in one side and then sewed just the front of the waistband on the opposite side. I tapered the seam down from my new stitch line to the old stitch line at the sequin section so I didn't have to worry about cutting into the sequins. Next I had to figure out how to get the waistband enclosed again, lol.

I started off at the zipper. I cut off the excess, pressed about 1/4" under and sewed the very top (to make sure the zipper tape top wasn't visible) and then at the old bottom of the waistband (this held the skirt up as well). I left the edge along the zipper open on the back to be done later.

I stitched the whole side of the skirt down from the paper bag section and tapered down to the sequins again. I had to stitch at the top a few different time and then check it until it ended up exactly the same length as the waistband so there would be no puckering.

I also wanted to reinforce the top of the seam now that it had cut edges that were folded under, so I just topstitched around the entire top.

The nice thing is that the topstitching is a normal feature on ready-to-wear clothes, so it looks like it was always there :)

 The only remaining thing to do was to stitch down the opening I left inside next to the zipper. Since I didn't want to have to remake the entire waistband, I just tacked it at the top and bottom with the machine, meaning I needed to hand stitch this part.

 It was short, so it wasn't a big deal. I hid the end of the thread in the opening and just stitched it down like a blind hem. You can't see if from the front at all.

Then I had to re-attach the hook and eye (I put the zipper a smidge low, so this wasn't an option). Technically it was finished at that point.

The last step for me was just a silly one. The tag still said 20W, but the skirt no longer was, so I just used my seam ripper to pull out the embroidered number...

And it was now just a skirt with no official size :) Easy-peasy.

I know it's a crappy picture, but it's all I could manage before work (and I really wanted to post this!). Now the skirt fits! It's a miracle :) I've worn it several times already and it fits great. This is yet another testament to how much I learned in the Tailoring Ready-To-Wear Class on Craftsy. I'm such a nerd with it too, every time someone compliments my skirt I just want to turn over the waistband to show them what I did, lol.

I am now addicted to altering skirts. It's great because you get all the satisfaction of making something from something that was unusable before without having to cut out the fabric (my sewing nemesis).

I love my new skirt and am so proud that I did it!

Mending Monday: Altering A Dress Hem Line (Plus Craftsy Class Review!)

Just to worn you - this is a very picture heavy post. I wanted to really illustrate what I did :)

Probably about 6 months ago, my fellow thrifting friend, Tara, brought this dress to me and asked if I could make the hem straight and remove the ruffle part.

I know that top photo isn't great, so here is a better shot of the details. Really, the top is very cute and I agreed with Tara - that asymmetrical hem had to go. The dress was made by A Byer too, so it was a decent quality piece and well worth saving. Back when Tara brought the dress to me, I seriously had no idea how I would complete the task. Normally, I would have just chopped the hem, folded it under and sewn a new hem line. The problem with doing that to this piece is the length - this baby is short! And if I used even more of the scant amount of fabric to roll under for a hem, it would have been down right indecent, lol. Over the last few months though, I've watched the Tailoring Ready-To-Wear class on Craftsy.com which has taught me so many valuable tips and tricks. Only after watching that class did I figure out a plan for altering this dress, and this is what I did:

First I had to mark where to chop the fabric for the new hem. I measured from the top of the ruffle part to the bit of piping at the waist of the dress - it was 16". Since the piping was symmetrical across the whole waist, I just measured down 16" from it and made a mark.

Next I laid the dress out on a table connected my spots with chalk. I made sure to do this on both sides to ensure I wasn't cutting the back uneven.

I chopped that ruffle off and this is what was left - already much better :)

The next step is actually a trick I learned for lengthening pants in the class. Instead of folding your fabric over, you just use a wide bias tape to add the length you will need on the other side. The fabric was a cotton/spandex, so it had some stretch and I knew that regular store bought bias tape wouldn't work. Luckily, I had that ruffled piece I just cut off the dress :) I laid out the lining from under the ruffle on my cutting mat and got it lined up as straight as possible. Then I measured 2" out, laid down my ruler and used my rotary cutter to cut it off. The best part of using this lining piece was that the edge already had a knitted bind off, so I didn't have to finish the edge at all :)

Once my bias tape was cut, I had to shorten it to match the new hem. I matched up the side seam on one side and marked where the new hem ended with a pin. Then I used an overcast stitch to sew the new side seam together and cut off the excess. The overcast stitch looks very similar to serging, so it matched the other side pretty well.

Then I pinned the cut edges of the bias tape to the right side of the cut edge of the dress and did the same overcasting stitch to hold them together. 

I was a little skeptical as to if this would hold the fabrics together well (I've never really used the overcast stitch before), but as you can see it made a nice seam and you couldn't see it from the outside at all - perfect!

And inside it looked so professional - just like a serger :) To make sure that the new hem facing doesn't constantly flip to the outside, I needed to understitch the seam allowance.

Understitching is where you stitch right along the seam allowance line on the facing fabric, and when the seam allowance is tacked down to that side, it basically helps to keep them bent toward each other and it won't flip out easily.

Since this was a stretch fabric, I used a very tight zig zag stitch for the understitching and this is what it looked like (above).

Next I had to press the new hem really well. I made the front fabric roll toward the onside just a bit to make sure that you can't see the bias tape while its worn.

The final step was a bit tricky. I pinned the edge of the hem together just to make sure the fabrics didn't slip around, and then I folded the fabric to do a blind hem. I've never really done this on a machine before, so I had to pull out my manual, lol, but it was very straight forward and I was able to get it lined up pretty well.

Next I just put it under my presser foot and stitched the blind hem. This was a slightly scary moment and I kept stopping and looking at the area I had just stitched to make sure it was truly a "blind hem". Much to my surprise, it looked great! You could see the stitches a little bit at first, but once I gave it a good press, it set the stitches where they should be and it looked just like a hem from something you would buy in a store :)

This is what the new hem looks like (left- outside, right - inside). I should have put the stitching closer to the edge of the bias tape inside, but this is a seriously minor point considering that I was able to do this at all :) I'm really pleased with how it came out.

And this is the finished product :) This is my first legitimate clothing alteration, and also my first opportunity to really use my knowledge from my Craftsy class. I would absolutely recommend this class to everyone! Angela Wolf (the teacher) was very entertaining to watch, but also very informative. She had done alterations for a long time and the class is purposely designed to teach you how to get started with your own alterations business. Pretty cool, right? She gives lots of time saving tips that she has learned from her own experience. You learn how to shorten and lengthen pants so that you can't tell it was done (even with jeans), how to fit a t-shirt, a dress bodice, a jacket sleeve, and even how to fix hems and invisible zippers :) She breaks things down to make things easy to understand even if you aren't an expert seamstress. I would even like to take more of the classes taught by Angela just because I liked this one so well.

I give this class 5 out of 5 stars! I can't believe how much I learned from it and I know that it will prove useful on many more projects to come. I would never have been able to do this alteration on this dress without my class knowledge. I hope this will encourage others to give it a look - you really have nothing to lose :)

*I did not receive any compensation for this post. I just really love the class! All opinions are 100% my own and not influenced in any way.