Well, hello there, sewing machine!
It's been a little while since I sewed anything, but I've been slowly whittling down my mending pile now that school is out for the summer.
Actually, I also did a little bit of repurposing (and I do mean little.)
Meet Nelson:
He belongs to Sonia (Because of course. He's a turtle.), and Sonia felt he was in need of a scarf.
So, she brought me an old sweater, and I managed to cut a scarf-length section from the arm.
I just used one piece, folded in half, right sides together. I stitched almost all the way around, turned it inside out, and hand-sewed the small opening shut.
And now Nelson has a scarf. He looks happy, don't you think?
Once Nelson had a scarf, Zoe's bear Barney suddenly had a hankering for one too. 😉
These two crack me up.
I've also done some mending, which is probably the most common type of sewing I do.
This towel has only lived at my house since Christmas, but for some reason, the hem was already coming apart.
So, I sewed it back up.
The same thing happened to one of our bath towels shortly after we bought it.
(Sometimes I wonder if they don't backstitch the hems at the factory or something!)
But it's fixed now.
Easy-peasy.
Oh, and I also mended a sleep shirt of mine. It has adjustable straps, but the adjuster pieces were made of plastic and one broke.
So, I cut the strap, removed the broken piece, and just sewed the strap at the length that fits me.
I tried sewing that by machine, but it ended up being much easier to just sew by hand.
Mending isn't very creative or exciting, certainly, but I do really love to fix things that are falling apart. It usually doesn't take long, and it greatly extends the usable life of my things.
A lot of people think that the best way to save money by sewing is to construct clothes from scratch, but I think mending easily saves you the most money per hour of effort.
So, take heart if you haven't sewed a single item of clothing from a bolt of cloth! Just keep sewing buttons back on and stitching up seams.
I agree with you! Nowadays, it's hard to justify the cost of the material and the other accoutrements to make a dress or skirt from scratch when it's usually cheaper to buy one on sale or at the thrift store. =) (Unless of course, you want it a certain style that's hard to find.) But I still have always wanted to get more proficient on the sewing machine for the types of things you mentioned. Thanks for the encouragement that the little mending projects are the ones that really count when it comes to saving money!
Yes...the buttons and zippers alone usually cost more than a thrift store find.
Speaking of thrift stores, that's another time sewing comes in handy! I often can make a thrifted item work with a little bit of tailoring/fixing.
This is totally off topic, but can you recommend a good spatula (the "rubber" kind) for baking? I can't find a link to the products you have recommended on Amazon.
Thanks
Well, I've been working on a page with the products that I love, but I'm not done with it, so it's not formatted very nicely and there are no photos! But here's the link: https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/the-frugal-girls-favorite-kitchen-equipment/ The spatula I like is on this list. It's flexible but not too flexible, and the handle is metal, which I vastly prefer to wood because wood always gets mildewy for me.
Wow, good job! I have some things that could use mending but I can't figure out how to mend--like some napkins that have, I don't know what term is, but a sort of serged hem and the stitched part is coming loose from the napkin part.
What I'd really like to get better at is alterations. I'm only 4'11", so I can't even buy pajama pants off the rack and wear them! Even if they are marked "petite"! I'm OK with a basic hem but anything fancier scares me. And I had to take my "skinny jeans" to a tailor because they wouldn't fit on my sewing machine, even with the table part removed.
Oh yeah, I don't know how in the world I'd hem skinny jeans. Tiny stuff is so hard to fit on a regular machine.
I have saved sooooo much money over the years by mending my family's clothes and other items. While ironing today I discovered one of my husband's work shirts had a button missing. Only took a few minutes to replace it. 🙂 Just one of the mending tasks completed this week. I get a huge sense of accomplishment and thriftiness from mending.
It's so simple, and yet a missing button makes a work shirt unwearable. It's so nice to be able to fix these sorts of things yourself.
A couple of days ago, my Grandson decided that his small panda bear bear, Isabella was turning 3. Of course she needed a present and since I
I sew, he suggested I make her a dress. I asked what color and he told me she likes pink. He said she loved her new dress. I love the imaginations
of children.
I do too! Just the names my kids chose for these guys crack me up..Barney and Nelson.
My DH has actually started mending his own stuff, which is pretty cool. I still have a pretty big pile to get through that I should do one of these days, or at least before fall starts (since it's mostly long-sleeve stuff in the pile).
Niiice! Mr. FG can sew a button on, but I believe that is the extent of his sewing skills.
I recently "turned the collar" on my husband's shirt because it was worn through. It is really easy for anyone who has a sewing machine. Just remove the stitches that anchor the collar to the shirt. (Hubby had actually already done this before he asked for the repair!) Turn the collar over and set it in where it belongs and stitch it up again. Easy peasy!
My next challenge is to patch the elbows of two shirts where they have worn through. Easy fix would be to cut them off and make them short-sleeved shirts, but hubby needs long sleeves for protection from the sun.
This conversation of sewing and being frugal reminds me of what my mother used to do in the 1950's and '60's. She would repair Dad's shirts until they could no longer be repaired. Then she would use whatever good fabric that was left, plus the buttons, and make a shirt for my brother. This shirt then was handed down through the brothers. If it was still wearable, it was passed along to a cousin. Not wearable? The buttons were removed and saved. The shirt was cut up and used as a cleaning rag.
Whoa. That's a level I'm not sure I will ever reach!
Yup....that's all I do! Sewing back buttons and mending seams. But I do it by hand. My mother is very generous to use her sewing machine for me on anything a little more difficult. She has an entire sewing room set up so it's always out and ready...lucky!
I'm interested in buying a sewing machine. What advice can you give? I'd like a reliable and long-lasting machine that can be used by kids sometimes too.
I just have a very basic Brother brand sewing machine. It does what I need it to do, but it's not exactly the bee's knees and it's not very kid-friendly either. I'd do some research online to see what's out there because I'm not a very good resource!
I really enjoy your post. you have helped me to save money on my phone bill and I also stopped paying for cable and joined the Netflix bunch. I also was inspired to start blogging and even though I have only been doing this a few weeks I have enjoyed it. Still learning how though. Thanks for what you do!
Count me as a mender, too. You inspired me to mend my clothes. I've mended everthing from towels and sheets to shirts to sweats and even sewed elbow patches on my black wool sweater with some leftover felt. I don't understand how now that I mend my clothes so many of them need to be mended.
I do some hand stitching, but I also use my grandma's old Singer machine. I'm getting a zigzag attachment to help w/ the repair work. Can't wait to try it out. Otherwise, it's pretty much pretty much the standard straight stitches.
I agree, mending does save me money. Although my fixes aren't pretty (my grandmother would roll in her grave if she saw my handiwork,) the clothes do get thrown back into rotation thereby saving me money. And since grandma was very frugal (she would knit a sweater for someone and if she didn't like the results, she would unwind it, straighten out the yarn, and knit another sweater for someone else!) grandma would approve of me trying to be frugal.