Dead T-Shirt Make Do and Mend

Here's a boy (number 2 in our family) in a boy's fleece. When I bought it this afternoon, though (1€50 special offer on fleeces at Veti Relais, the charity shop)...

it was a girl's fleece. Eew!

Double eew!

Thanks to a tiny T-shirt that Son 2 outgrew years ago, but which he'd begged me to keep because one day I might do something with it, he now has a fleece with his favourite glow-in-the-dark Puerto Rican frog on it again!

j

I'm quite pleased with the results of an hour's blanket-stitching. His response when he saw his frog ride again? "Cool!"

j

PS - DS allowed as it's Friday night, in case you were wondering about my relaxation of the 'no video games on week nights' rule!

j

PPS I'm going to take my week's break now. I won't be looking at your blog or mine until next Friday, now. Have a lovely week, friends.

Which came first - the sock or the egg?

Well, in this case, I think it was clearly the egg! We have a chronology here in the picture - 2011 Marks and Spencer socks, 1970s flowered sewing basket, and pre-1950 French darning egg. The pack of otherwise super M&S mail-order socks included one that sprang a hole almost the moment Ben put it on. I was all for sending it back and complaining, but Ben thought it wasn't worth the trouble ("c'est pas la peine") and asked if the sock was at all mendable.

I thought I'd give it a go, as I'd mended a lot of sock seams in my time, and had 'sort-of' darned a few things, and had read instructions in both 'Make Do and Mend' and 'How Green are my Wellies?'

Picking the right darning wool for a sock which is red, pink and black, was no trouble at all, as I could only find white in my vintage darning wool 'collection'!

And it turned out all right. The proof of the darning was in the wearing - I said to Ben one evening: 'Have you found that sock I darned yet?' and he replied that he hadn't realised I'd done it. He took off his shoe to check which socks he'd been wearing all day and, lo and behold, he'd been comfortably walking around for the last 12 hours without realising he had a darned sock! So I'd say it worked.

j

Thanks for your continued, much-valued comments. We are now on holiday, and the reduced timetable of the last few school days meant that Son 2 could pop in and out of school whenever he had a lesson, which meant we could also manage his painkillers and general exhaustion. My father has been discharged from hospital and the boys and I will be flying out to visit him on Tuesday! We are very grateful.

Thread Storage - A Piece of Cake!

I saw this idea on another blog - I think it may have been the wonderful Kitschen Pink, but, you know how it is, you see so many great ideas....I cannot be the only person who finds horrible tangles of mixed thread in the sewing box, so I've been looking for alternative thread storage for a while. I know there are other ways, but I thought this would be a bit of fun for now, and it motivated me to sort out my whole downstairs sewing area at the same time - shame about the speaker, but that's life!
In the photo above, from left to right, are the 60s mending basket I bought at a VG, a 70s flowered basket I got at Veti Relais and a cane basket which was a present from my mother in law. Above that you can see a clipboard which has my scarily long mending list on it - I sorted through the things that needed mending and listed them according to colour - I've mended everything that needed either red or white thread already! It makes life a bit easier, so I actually get things done...
On the table (left to right again) are the '30s embroidered pin cushion I've already shown you and a needle book from my mother in law, the cake stand from Troc Tout with threads and other vintage sewing things, a pin cushion/thimble holder and, on the speaker, a basket of vintage threads and the wonderful ribbons Sarah sent me from NZ.
You can see the threads Son 2 gave me for my birthday, and....
...the sweet vintage pin cushion and thimble holder, with its two shabby little birds, which Son 2 bought in our 2 Euro Challenge last spring!

I'm quite happy with how it's come together, given the eclectic nature of my sewing things and all the other stuff (speaker, electrical lead etc) that have to be fitted into that area too. I hope it makes sewing easier and finding the right thread a piece of cake!