mending Archives - Page 3 of 10

Alterations reminiscences

For two summers, full time before my senior year of college and half time after, I worked at an alterations shop. I learned a lot in general about clothing and construction and fitting, but there were a few specific things we did differently there than I’ve done in my sewing before and since. Every one of them improved efficiency in some way, but two are impractical now and two I simply don’t do any more. Let me tell you and you can see what you think.

Oh, and happy birthday to my mama!

1. Our sewing machines had two pedals: one knee and one foot. They were industrial machines that came this way, and I don’t know how easy it would be to retrofit a home sewing machine with such an apparatus, but one pedal lifted the presser foot and one ran the machine. To be honest I don’t remember which was which, but I assume the knee pedal ran the machine since that motion is much less fatiguing over the course of a day than working a foot pedal. Hands-free presser foot manipulation saves a lot of time over the course of a day.

2. We tenderized jeans. Hemming jeans even on an industrial machine presents its challenges, and we kept a mallet in the shop to flatten the seams before sewing. Nowadays I use a Jean-a-ma-jig (there’s a similar tool called a Hump Jumper), which works well, if slowly.

3. We used razor blades instead of seam rippers. They are WAY quicker. You want to make sure you have a sharp one so that it cuts threads without much pressure; that keeps you from accidentally slicing into the garment. Of course you have to use it in a particular way: by pulling the two pieces of fabric apart from each other and slicing the taut threads between. For removing, say, topstitching, a seam ripper is probably still better. You do end up with a lot of loose threads, but they may not matter if the fabric is to be trimmed, and otherwise you can try the lint roller trick (not something we did in the alteration shop. I honestly can’t remember how we dealt with threads).

4. My favorite trick and one I will implement if I ever have a sewing space suited to it (and use my iron enough to warrant it): we had our iron cord hooked up high. I can’t remember whether it was the ceiling or high on the wall, but we had an extension cord, and from the iron the cord went upward before going through a hook and heading back down to the outlet. The cord never gets in the way or hung up on anything, or crumples your fabric by dragging against it. It’s a simple, brilliant move.

Attribution: Razor blade picture by Zephyris via Wikimedia Commons. All others via Pixabay.

FF: Repurposing clothing

This month we’re exploring ideas for worn out or damaged clothing.

Of course you can simply use them as fabric, as in the t-shirt quilt or this flannel infinity scarf made from PJ pants. A little more specific to the clothing but still really just using it as fabric are the famous t-shirt market bag and the less famous but lovely jeans-leg apron. Scrap Users might be a useful resource for this; the t-shirt quilt link and a few of the links below were on that page before its remodel, inspiring this topic.

Cutting clothing into strips is popular and versatile. T-shirts are a common target, since they are stretchy, but firm when several strips are put together. They’re good for bracelets, headbands, and belts. Here’s a macrame t-shirt bracelet and a braided belt from t-shirt strips. I saw a photo tutorial for making a seat cushion from long, wide strips of fabric (it may have been sheets, but t-shirts would work). I couldn’t track down the original, but it was essentially a large-scale friendship bracelet with the strip ends tied around the posts of the back of the chair. If you have enough clothes you can make a rug, whether that be shag, braided, woven, or knotted.

You could design endless variations on these themes, and I have some links to help you do so: T.J. Potter has my favorite collection of braiding instructions. You may also find macrame, boondoggle, and friendship bracelet resources helpful.

I find it a more interesting challenge, though, to think about using clothing for its characteristics as clothing. You can recombine clothes into Frankenstein’s wardrobe, as in these girls’ shirts (though only one of those fabrics was a shirt originally). I have seen shirts for men made from two or three contrasting shirts cut apart along the same lines and recombined, often with some kind of trim along the new seams, but have been unable to find any online. Simpler versions of that idea can be found in this Two-Face costume, straight-yoked shirt, and heart-yoked shirt, and art smock. For more ideas you could start searching for images of bowling shirts, rockabilly shirts, or colorblock shirts.

Dress shirts have so many distinctive features they are a natural choice for these sorts of projects. Here is a little girl’s dress from man’s dress shirt; the back is the sleeves, opened out and hanging from the cuffs, and the front of the dress is the shirt’s back, so the yoke is a bodice panel. These baby bibs are made from both dress shirts and t-shirts. The cuffs from an adult-size button down shirt can be made into a small wallet. [Her folding instructions are rather vague. I would say, button the cuff, flatten it so the end of the button side is tucked right into a fold near the buttonhole side, pin near the resulting fold at the opposite end, unbutton and sew.] Last but not least, Between the Lines has a guide for making a toiletry bag from a dress shirt (and some linen), using the body of the shirt to line the bag so that the original button front is a button closure at the top of the bag, and adding various features of the shirt to the outside of the bag as pockets and hanging straps. It’s quite lovely and she tries to give all the information you need to adapt it to a different shirt from the one she used.

The distinction of sweaters is the kind of material and the ribbing that typically appears at the cuffs and perhaps at the hem. You can use the sweater body to cover a pillow or sew mittens; with the addition of a cuff you can make a cute wine bottle holder. The sleeves are a natural for leggings and boot socks.

No discussion of repurposing clothing would be complete without jeans. The hems and topstitched seams can be turned into coasters, if you have enough of them. The top portion can be turned into a tote bag (I did this once – scroll down), or just the back side into an apron, with cleverly added pocket. A lunch bag can be made from the leg, and a similar bag could be made with other pants, or even the sleeves of a blazer or coat.

What have you seen that ought to be on this list?

(V-)necking.

After I tracked down the shirt to remodel for July’s Craft Challenge, which was hiding in the “remodel or eliminate” bag in the closet (clever), I had to decide what to do with it. It was just about the right size (if boxy, and with that unpleasantly small neck opening) so I couldn’t do anything that required extra fabric (I had thought at first that I could perhaps turn it into a swimsuit coverup, but it didn’t have enough coverage). I trolled through Pinterest boards and other compendia linked from Sewing Tidbits and came across a tutorial on turning a crew neck t-shirt into a V-neck.

That sounded like a good place to start. Actually, changing the color sounded like a better place to start – I figured if I ever planned to dye it, it would be better to do so at the beginning. I don’t have a before-before picture, but you can imagine the standard t-shirt heather gray.

To obtain material for the new collar, I shortened the shirt, which helped with fit as well. The plan was to change the collar and then reassess fit before re-hemming the bottom, and as I expected the v-neck helped the fit substantially – so much so that all I did afterward was re-hem. I took 4.25″ off the bottom, in addition to the 1.5″ or so that came off when I removed the hem to make the collar.

For the collar attachment I used a narrow, short zigzag, but I topstitched with a straight stitch. For the hem I dug out my trusty double needle. The end product looks a little boxy on the hanger, but loose and comfortable on me.