The Mending Basket - First Projects

As I stated in my first post about beginning to sew again, whenever I finished a longer project, I wanted to complete a few mending projects, a refashion, or a home decoration project.  After finishing my Peony, I did three mending projects.  Unfortunately, this first post doesn't have 'before' shots.  In the future I'm going to try and plan these out in advance so that the photography will be more complete with before, during, and after shots.

Look at the pockets!

The first is a dress, which is one of my favorite vintage pieces.  I've been steadily building a collection of vintage garments, and they need lots of TLC and sometimes a decent mending job here and there.  This dress had gotten a small hole in the back seam.  I just did a simple whip stitch to close up the 1 1/2" hole that had formed from the seam coming undone.  Thankfully, it was the seam that came apart and not the fabric so it was very straight forward.

The second is a skirt that I've finally finished shortening!  I had gotten it at Penny's on Black Friday for 50% off.  It's a Jones Wear skirt, lovely drape, lined, and very warm.  The plaid has a teal stripe in it, which goes with a lot of my winter knits.  I had cut it to the length I wanted, began ironing the hem, and then put it away for a year.  Now it's finished!  Skirt and lining both hemmed.

The third project is a skirt that had become too small for me in the waist.  Over the past few months I've lost about twenty pounds.  As a result, several of my favorite skirts don't fit right in the waist and either sit a little too low on my hips, or just fall to the floor.  Both situations make me a bit nervous for being out in public, and I want to reuse as much of my wardrobe as possible, and so I just couldn't justify buying a whole new wardrobe when making easy adjustments to my favorite clothing would suffice. 

This skirt is the first in a line of ones I want to make changes to.  It only has two seams, and both seams incorperate pockets so I created a new seam down the back to take in the skirt a few inches, but not mess with the pockets.  The second thing I did was shorten it about four inches to make it pouf a little bit more as well as not be such an awkward length.  One issue with being tall is long skirts usually hit at tea length, and it's just too dowdy for me.  The way I remedy that is by shortening the skirt to be just a few inches past the knee to freshen up the look.

I've photographed the items with a complete outfit.  I like looking at pictures of complete outfits for inspiration, and it's nice to see refashioning/mending/DIY jobs as they would be worn everyday. 

Have any of you been doing any mending lately?  Is there a specific kind of mending you would be interested in seeing?