wherein Liz sews stuff (and gets rid of some junk in the process)

[edenfalling]

Tonight I looked through my old bags of 'repair this maybe?' clothing and threw most of the items out. It is not really cost-effective to repair underwear (except if the tears are right along the seams), nor is there much point in repairing bras that don't fit anymore. I couldn't figure out why one pair of pants was in the repair queue, but I will be donating them to charity anyhow.

I will also be donating the brown shirt with the useless sleeves that I suspect I got from my Aunt Cara after one of her bargain-hunting sprees -- instead of proper cuffs, it has these five-inch slits on each arm down at the wrist end. I do not like the fit or the fabric well enough to put in the effort of sewing those closed, but it is a nice shirt and somebody else might like it fine. (Designer clothes are weird, is all I'm saying.)

Once I'd dealt with all that, I made some progress on the few items I'm keeping. I reattached the straps of my shoulder/tote bag to the bag itself, I closed a tear in my cheap nylon laundry bag (it was along the seam, so it was worth fixing; when it inevitably gets holes elsewhere, I will toss it), I put some tucks in the waistband of a black skirt so I can still wear it even though the elastic has gone stretched and mostly useless, and I hemmed one leg of a new pair of black pants.

That is quite enough for one day!

I occasionally think of investing in a small sewing machine just so hemming wouldn't be such a production, but I have never been able to justify the expense to myself when I so rarely need to sew anything and I can hand-stitch perfectly well when necessary. This does not stop hand-stitching from being a massive pain in the neck, particularly when I'm using back-stitch rather than running stitch. *sigh*

Comments

[edenfalling]

Oh god, I cannot even imagine hemming a whole skirt by hand. I just hem pretty much every pair of pants I buy, because I am short and they are invariably too long. It is much simpler to buy 'regular' length pants and hem them than it is to find 'petite' style pants... especially when 'petites' are often a little too short. *sigh*

[marmota_b]

Yeah, I can imagine. Pants seem to be a universal problem. I'm fairly regular-sized if short-ish, but with long torso and short legs, and a pretty big difference between waist and hips. Very soon, it became clear that no matter what kind of pants I buy, they're going to fit badly *somewhere*. One of the main reasons why I've taken up sewing from scratch!

I've done hand-hemming on skirts, but not the fully pleated ones!