Altering My Outlook
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have been sewing clothing for about fifty years now, and for all that time I have HATED doing clothing alterations. I have done a few for myself and my family when I absolutely had to, but jumped at the chance to have someone else do them for me. I had a card for a store chain that included up to a set amount of alterations for free every year, and boy, did I take advantage of that! I did not hem pants for years!
In the past few years as I have gotten back into making garments for myself, I have learned more about fitting, from the flat pattern stage through the alterations stage. In the years since, I was into garment sewing in a major way, the garment industry has changed drastically. There have never been fit standards in ready-to-wear (RTW) clothes, which is why, for example, a size ten from Walmart or Target would fit at ten-year-old while a size ten from a designer brand would fit a curvy adult woman. Even those loosey- goosey standards are out the window these days. I could write a book about this issue, but suffice it to say, it is hard to find women’s RTW that fit anyone properly in the shops these days. That leaves a, ahem, mature woman like me to do some altering to achieve anything close to proper fit…and I have more or less embraced alterations at long last.
So far I have done some simple things like taking in the sides of a too-full skirt, tapering the lower legs of pants to make them not so floppy, and putting tucks in the back waistband of pants to keep them from sliding down every time I bend over. I have also learned I can cut a slit on the inside of a waistband and run elastic through to help the fit a little. They make elastic that has buttonholes built in so you can sew a button next to the slit for the elastic and just tighten or loosen by changing which buttonhole you use!
My next project is to take apart one of those ill-fitting Tshirts I mentioned last time and see if I can sew it back together to fit properly. A T-shirt is a simple shape, and luckily I have a serger, which makes putting it back together much simpler and faster. A handy feature of poorly-made clothing is they are much easier to deconstruct than well-made clothing!
Besides embracing my ability to make things fit better, I have also gotten interested in making clothing last longer, thus I have been doing some repairs. Despite finding this to be onerous in the past, I now view it more as a challenge to see if I can engineer a workable solution. As hard as my husband is on clothes, I have a constant supply of new challenges! Besides, “creative mending” is a fashion trend these days. With the quality of RTW fabrics going down the same tubes as fit and construction, it behooves me to learn to mend and reuse older garments made from quality fabrics.
Just to be clear, I am not in any way advertising that I am willing to do alterations for the public. As I have always said, I sew for love or fun, but not for money. On the other hand, if I can encourage anyone else to take up sewing, altering, repairing, then I would be happy to do so.