Sunday, September 14, 2014

My Latest: Making Repairs and Playing with Food

a round-up of easy repair tutes






Look how cute it turned out!

I'll pretend that I'm showing you the following pictures just to illustrate to you how well the dress drapes, but really you know that I just want to show off my adorable kid:



In some ways, this project might seem a little odd: the dress itself is from Old Navy, which is known for its cheap, easily-replaced garments, and this particular dress, actually, was free, a hand-me-down from a friend who warned me, when she gave it to me, that it had a hole in the tushy. 

Why bother repairing, you might ask, when I could probably walk into Old Navy today and buy an identical one for four bucks?

Well, because even though it's from Old Navy (I've had bad luck with some of their clothes), it's a good-quality garment, it's roomy enough to fit Syd well through next summer, it's comfortable and she likes it so it will get a lot of wear, and it's so easy to repair that I couldn't have gone to Old Navy and back in the time that it took me to mend this dress. 

Even so, yeah, it did take me about an hour to mend a $4 dress, which wouldn't be worth it to a lot of people. But it's worth it to me, because I prefer to use what we have rather than buy new, even if it's cheap, and I like to see my kids wearing clothes that I've sewed for them, and I to see my kids in interesting, unexpected clothes, when I have the time to make them for them. 

So I had a little extra free time this Wednesday to repair a comfy dress using an interesting detail, and it made me happy, and it made Syd happy, so yay.

And then, of course, we woke up the next morning to see that the weather turned, and it's now freezing here. And now I'm extra glad that I lengthened the dress so that Syd can wear it next summer, too!

2 comments:

Tina said...

I love how this dress turned out! Could she wear long sleeves and pants under it this winter?

I was just mentally throwing a pity party because I won't have the time (or space) to make pants for Emma this winter. I've made her a few pairs every winter for the last few years so I'm a little sad about it.

However, we now know that our next place will absolutely have space for sewing and crafting.

julie said...

She probably could. I'm always reluctant to let the kids wear their clothes off-season, though, if I feel like they'll still fit them when the appropriate season rolls around, because they're so hard on their clothes! By the time spring comes again and this dress would be cute and comfy, she'll have trashed it, guaranteed. Painted a deck chair while wearing it, or fallen out of a tree and ripped it, etc.