I'm back after a long break

I have been neglecting everything else online except Instagram, but I thought I might start posting my projects here again. The difference between the current ones and the previous ones is that I'm currently not doing miniature stuff, but clothes and other sewing for myself.

This post is a collection of some alteration/mending, which started my current projects. I haven't had much work this year and didn't get much done before summer due to severe lack of motivation (caused by the depressing work situation). However, when I had a duvet cover that was too frayed on the edges and decided to turn it into a couple of pillow covers, I suddenly found motivation to do some other sewing as well, and now I have several unfinished projects going on.

Let's start with the pillow covers. The duvet cover had a picture of Garfield ready to go to bed. I decided to use his face for the pillow covers.

The next project was mending a cardigan that had a hole in the elbow. I got it used from my aunt and it's made in China, so it's not like it's valuable, I just thought it might be a good idea to try mending it. I learned this sort of mending at school (5th or 6th grade), but haven't needed the skill for years (maybe decades), so I had to do some Internet searches to refresh my memory. The result is not a square as it should be, but it's good enough for me.

Discussing the mending with an online friend led me to sashiko, visible mending. Of course I had to try that as well. I had been mending some jeans just using a zigzag stitch to attach a piece of fabric under the part that was too worn. Visible mending turned out to be much more fun. I have only used it for two pairs of jeans for now, but probably will use it more later, experimenting with different kind of stitches.

The last one for this post is replacing the zipper in a winter jacket. The original zipper was of poor quality and had been causing trouble since I bought the jacket. So I bought a sturdy zipper in a nicer color and replaced it. This was the first time ever I did something like this, but the result looks quite nice.

I have made some alterations and totally new items after these, so those will be described in future posts. I'll try to post once a project is ready, so I'll get all the different stages in one post.