Sewing and Knitting Update - 12 July 2025

This week I’ve been very busy making lots of sewing alterations to friends’ dresses. I’ve also even considered the idea of starting a business doing just alterations. Everything I do is on a ‘best endeavours’ basis though and it’s all for friends and family so they know I’m not a professional. I’m very careful and fortunately haven’t spoilt any of the garments I’ve altered so far. It must be nerve wracking to make this sort of work for real when there’s a big time pressure or financial issues at play.

In general we buy second-hand clothes mostly from Vinted. When the clothes arrive either by post or courier the first thing we do is to wash them well. Then comes the fun part which is mostly shortening or adjusting the hem or shoulder line.

The photo above shows you just one of the many hems I’ve had to shorten. I measure carefully, then after overlocking the raw edges (and cutting at the same time) I use the sewing machine to hem. The ideal process is to iron carefully along the overlocked edge but it’s been too hot to do that so I’ve just folded and then sewn slowly to make sure I’m accurate.

The photo above shows a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ along the hem. As you can probably see the line of sewing has the closest matching thread I could find.

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I haven’t advanced that much on the knitting front and the good summer weather is definitely to blame for that. The photo below shows you some of the knitting I’ve managed to achieve on the first sock.

I still have a long way to go to complete this pair but the cold weather seems so far away now I can relax and enjoy the sun.

Many thanks for reading !