Just before we went on vacation last month I realized that 2 of my Value Village skirts needed alterations.
Wearing a skirt that’s too tight around the waist gives me horrible stabbing stomach pains for some reason. So after suffering in the white skirt for a while, I decided it needed a radical waist-band-ectomy. I was hoping to use a less invasive technique (a laparoscopic elastic-ectomy) but the elastic was sewn very strongly into the gathered band, so the whole thing had to be removed. I was able to keep the drawstring and iron down a channel for it to run through, hand stitched into place. I didn’t lose much length in the process – I can wear the skirt lower on my waist, and I had a couple of extra inches anyway (since I’m only 5″2″). The finished skirt is much more comfortable.
The blood orange skirt worked well as a wrap with an underskirt, but I thought it might be more practical if I sewed the sides together. Especially in the wind! I wanted a skirt, not a flag. I ran a little whipstitch down to join the two sides, leaving a little slit at the bottom and a bigger one at the top so I could still get it on. The wrap ties still work, and for the most part the gap at the top doesn’t show. It’s has a cute little “poodle skirt” line, or so one of my coworkers thought (“that’s a cute Mexican poodle skirt” she said). I wore it in Hawaii (where an underskirt would have been suffocatingly hot, and the wind never lets up) and it was perfect. I haven’t tried it with my usual underskirt since, but I think it will still work fine.
I enjoy hand sewing, and I’m glad I have the basic skills to mend and alter my clothes. I can’t imagine making a whole quilt by hand (like Jinny Beyer does) but I agree with her that, with practice, hand sewing can be almost as fast and effective as machine sewing, at least for some things.
btw sorry for my recent absence… sometimes the thought of solving a problem is more of an obstacle than the problem itself!
Jo:)
adventures in the here now 