Last week, I took a break from decluttering in my free time to sew. (Fun fact for those who weren’t aware I had this skill.) It originally started because my mom wanted me to repair her winter jacket. The material had ripped near the bottom part of her zipper back in December, and she was waiting for the weather to warm up before forfeiting it to me. The temperature has been slowly climbing since Spring officially began (which is about time), so I was finally given this coat.
At first, I thought I was going to have to sew it by hand. This method is more tedious and time-consuming than running it through the machine, so I wasn’t looking forward to it. But upon further inspection, I decided that I could totally sew it on my machine. Took me under five minutes to patch the jacket up.
Coincidentally, the week before, I also had a friend (well, she’s probably more of my mom’s friend) ask me if I could repair the growing tear in her coin purse. I’ve done this before for her, so she sent it to me through the mail. (Unfortunately, the purse’s zipper inside the envelope got caught in the post office’s machine, so the envelope got mangled. Guess who had to pay $2.56 to receive this “package”?)
So two days after I fixed my mom’s jacket, I went to work at repairing this purple coin purse. This one can only be done by hand. And despite the hassle it is to thread the needle and making all sorts of knots, I found the process of hand-sewing more relaxing than machine-sewing. I’m just sitting there, making loops after loops. No need to keep an intense gaze at the sewing needle and its foot, making sure that the line of thread is as straight as it should be. No clicking needles or whirling gears.
I feel this ease while I’m sewing buttons too. (I do a lot of this kind of repair work.) There’s a way to do them on my machine, but I can’t remember how it’s done – despite how few dials my antique machine has compared to more modern ones.
And since I got back into sewing this past week, I decided to also tackle a sewing project. There’s an old dress that I acquired last year that used to be my mom’s back in the day. It was originally going to be donated, but I set it aside due to its potential. Black is a classic color, and the long floral skirt of the dress isn’t out-of-fashion.
The only downside of it is where the hemline of the “top” ended. Didn’t flatter my body shape. I’m currently in the process of moving it up about two inches, which means the bottom button will be disappearing. The hardest part is just making sure that nothing looks too bulky as I’m folding material. I’ve also added little decorative details too. Like ran a line on the collar, because for some reason, it only had it in the back. Now it looks a little more polished.
Fingers crossed that everything turns out okay. After all, I had to pull stitches out twice already for one of the decorative areas. One of the instances was when I had accidentally sewn the front of the dress to the back. What an idiot move on my part; I’ve never done that before. (My elementary sewing instructor would be so disappointed in me.) Although, now I’m thinking about taking half of the stitches out for those because I’m not liking the way they look when I model the dress.
It seems like I’m always trying to edit something, ever the perfectionist.
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