To be fair, serving as my kid's bespoke seamstress is high-key my favorite thing EVER. All I apparently really want with my life is for people to want me to sew things for them.
And the little kid, at least, is happy to oblige!
First, some mending:
I don't know if it's secret sensory issues or just the fact that I raised picky parsnips, but both kids have the absolute worst time trying to find clothes they like. I lecture often on how many pants and shirts, etc., ought to make up a minimum wardrobe, and yet both kids regularly go off to college with half that and then bitch that all their clothes are constantly falling apart.
Like, YEAH, if you're wearing and therefore washing a garment all the time, it's obviously going to wear out more quickly! THIS IS WHY YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU TO BRING MORE CLOTHES TO SCHOOL!
And don't even get me started about coats. One kid insists that she has not and will not ever find a coat she likes, and pretty much just layers infinite hoodies. In a Philadelphia winter, no less. I've told her that at some point her professors are going to decide that she must be too impoverished to buy herself a coat and take up a collection, and she'll wake up one morning to find that they've put a gift bag with a brand-new coat in it outside her dorm room door. It won't be to her taste, but she'll nevertheless have to wear it until graduation lest she seem ungrateful.
The other kid does have a single coat that she approves of enough to wear--not that it's warm enough for her own Ohio winters, but whatever--but over Winter Break one day I got too close to the kid while she was wearing it, and I was all, "...do you ever wash this thing?"
"Sometimes," she said.
"How?"
"Cold and Delicate, like the label says."
I said, "Yeah... no," and then wrestled it off her. Girl was wearing this thing not only to class every day, but also to the horse barn twice a week and the Humane Society once a week, not to mention on environmental science field trips and throughout all the other horrors of college life. And then she was barely washing it, because the label said she had to treat it fancy!
Like, it's a COAT, Bro. And not even a puffer coat. It can take a little bit of temperature. I soaked it for a day in hot water with a half-cup of Biz stirred in, closed inside my cooler to keep the water hot. I will not describe to you the state of the water when I finally drained it, but it was something. Afterwards, I stuffed it inside a mesh laundry bag and washed it on Warm and Regular with two rinses with my regular laundry detergent, more Biz, a half-cup of ammonia, and a fistful of citric acid in the rinse compartment because I have the hardest water on the planet.
Let me tell you that this coat was squeaky clean when it got done. Not a whiff of horse or dog or polluted creek to be found! The faux fur was a little stiff after air drying, but after I went over it with a lint rake it was also soft and fluffy again.
This is your sign to become as obsessed with the r/laundry subreddit as I am.
Along with the mending and the laundry, I actualized the little kid's dream of stitching just the sleeves of a long-sleeved T-shirt inside the sleeves of a short-sleeved T-shirt, so that the kid could get the layered T-shirt look without having to wear layered T-shirts on her body:
*cough, cough* sensory issues *cough*
I thought the stitch lines ended up a little too visible to fool anyone, but the kid said she liked it, so whatever.
My biggest sewing project, though, was for a kid who I don't even know yet!
In the younger kid's first care package of the school year, I sent her and her roommates a set of hoodies that I'd appliqued with their school name in their class colors. I'm VERY chuffed that all the kids seem to love them, and even more chuffed that when I offered to make a similar hoodie for the younger kid's Hell Child (it's a school thing, don't worry about it) in that kid's class colors, the younger kid was super enthusiastic about it.
So I thrifted a hoodie, double-checked the one I'd made for the kid so I could remember how on earth I'd made it--
 |
| I've asked the kid several times if the loose threads are an issue, because I'd worried they wouldn't like it, but she says that all the hoodie recipients are super into that look. So yay! |
--and then made a red version for the kid's baby red!
I used Heat n' Bond instead of Pellon for this project (I miss you, Joann's!), and although I'm worried it won't wear as well as the Pellon, omg it was SO much easier to apply.
Honestly, I think it turned out even cuter than the blue version, thanks to the matching hoodie color:
And now the kids are back at school for the Spring semester, and I have nobody to sew for but boring old me, sigh. I did impulse buy this giant bow pattern so I can make a giant Valentine's bow that I do not need but will nevertheless decorate my front door with, so that will keep me entertained for a few evenings, I guess.
Spam me with all your ideas for where I can put giant bows!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!