Mending Day

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's not all fun and made-from-scratch dresses here!  Some days, I just have a pile of mending and alterations.  But I shouldn't whine... every seam I sew teaches me something.  So this post is a quick run-down of the projects on my table today. 

First, I made a to-do list, because I like checking things off.  I grouped things by thread color so I would not waste time threading and re-threading my sewing machine: 

Iron
      blazer fabric
      pink cotton
      blue & white toile
Orange thread
      Christy's skirt hem
      Lunch bag for me
White thread
      Mike's tent repair
      Moire's peach dress alteration
Gray thread
      Moire's pants repair & alteration
      Moire's pillowcase (jersey scraps)

And here's my finished pile:

New fabrics washed and ironed.

Orange skirt shortened by 8 inches and re-hemmed.  Orange vinyl lunch bag made.  

The hole.

Mended.

Hole in tent patched.  Patch sewn into, not on top of, zipper binding.  

Peach dress altered: the torso was too long, leading to a saggy front with ill-positioned bust darts.  I took out 1.5 inches at the shoulder seam, making for a smaller armscye and shorter torso.  

Gray pants were frayed at hem and too tight at waist.  As the hem length was good, I fixed the fraying not by shortening the pants but by using some interfacing to stabilize the fabric, and facing it with blue bias tape.  (The interfacing didn't like to stick to the fancy synthetic rip-stop fabric, so the bit that didn't get sewn into the seam peeled away when I was done!)  I lost only a quarter inch in length.  For the waist, I removed the CB belt loop and opened the CB seam, added a triangle gusset to relieve the tightness, covered it with more bias tape, and re-sewed the belt loop to cover the alteration.  

Made a pillowcase for a little airline pillow using scraps of jersey from old tee shirts.  

The ironing and the lunch bag were for me; everything else was paying work!  I don't love alterations, but I do get satisfaction from them.  I like to see un-useful things become useful, and I know these clothes will get used now that they properly fit their owners!