For Christmas, I made my daughter Sophie a bag out of brown furnishing fabric lined with brown linen. I made the handles out of linen also as I had more of it. However, the bag is being used daily, and the loads it's carried have taken their toll on the handles, linen not being a fabric that takes hard wear. Sophie brought it around last night for me to take remedial action.
Linen is a lovely fabric to work with, but the same can't be said of furnishing and upholstery fabrics, which are much heavier. I decided that the new handles would need more batting inside, and this made sewing them a bit tricky, so I stitched the first seam down as it wouldn't stay in place with ironing.
Then I folded the other side over with the edge tucked in, and pinned it seriously. Those decorative stripes make it thicker to sew. The handles also have a seam in them to make them the right length, and an emergency trip to the quilting shop to buy jeans needles was called for after I snapped a needle on the second one.
There. As good as new. Now I have 2 tops to alter - Sophie bought them in a sale, but both have bindings on the sleeves that no Western size 12 woman could possibly put her arms through. A teeny tiny Chinese woman, perhaps, like the ones who made them. They're a bit harder so I'll attack them another day.When my son Cass was here for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, he produced a couple of pairs of jeans for mending. Nothing unusual there. I've been mending his jeans since he went to university at 17. He is now 29. No, I don't know how many pairs of jeans I've fixed in this time, but some of them I mended more than once. He likes to buy expensive jeans because they fit better, and it would be crazy to discard them because of tears or worn patches. I have become quite good at patching which is all done on the inside.
Sewing machines. Aren't they a wonderful invention?
2 comments:
Good on you Shirley. I hate mending and would prefer to start making something from scratch. Unfortunately my husband is not blessed with long legs so always needs his trousers taken up. He now knows to warn me of impending new pants being bought - he even text me two weeks ago to say he had just purchased some, would be bringing them home that night so to prepare myself mentally for hemtakingup!!!!!!!!! Yes, sewing machines are wonderful....but so much nicer when sewing lovely scrummy quilts:) Ciao
Hiya Shirley!!!
I'm dropping by after a long absence blogging and am delighted to see your pages again, also to add a little note... I'm changing my blog and webpage to http://thestudio-helensuzanne.blogspot.com/ and thought you'd like to update/add any old link you might have for heb-art journal.
Hope all is going well for you.
all the best
Helen S
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