Monday = mending pile day!

Shameful though it is to admit, lurking in the corner of my sewing room is a large (and I do mean LARGE!) mending pile. I keep on telling myself – after I’ve finished making this dress/top/skirt/whatever I’ll go and take care of some of the mending. But I never do – lets face it, a brand new project is far more fun than the mending pile ever will be! And so things languish there for months. Sometimes all they need is a quick 10 minutes of hemming or sewing a button back on, but I just never get around to it. Shameful, but true. 😦

I’ve got all sorts of things in my mending pile – garments with falling-down hems, buttons that have come loose, trousers that need to be taken down (or up if they’re never going to be long enough and I’ve decided they’ll do as three-quarter pants instead), UFO’s that have been floating around with just a tiny bit left to go on them, things that need alterations – anything from big ‘I’m going to make this dress into a skirt” type alterations through to “the facing isn’t sitting right on these armholes so I want to tack it down a bit more” alterations. Lots and lots of beautiful clothes, sitting there unworn as they languish in a pile of things I may never get around to doing.

But now, I’ve decided to take action! From now on, I’m giving myself a Mending Pile Monday challenge. (I’m even going to make a button for it, as soon as I figure out the best way to do that – it’ll be my first ever made-by-me blog button! Eek!) Every Monday, I’m going to tackle one thing from my mending pile and get it finished off and back into my wearable wardrobe. And hopefully, if I keep that up, in about three years I won’t have a mending/alterations/UFO’s pile any more. Won’t that be nice? No more guilt hanging about behind my shoulder whenever I start on a new project. I’ll be free to sew what I want, when I feel like sewing it! Bliss!

So for today, the first Mending Pile Monday, I tackled a belt that I cut out a few weeks ago for my Leaves and Hats dress. At the time, I decided that since the fabric for the dress was so patterned I’d prefer to wear it with a plain solid-colour belt. I’d already cut the belt out though, so it’s been sitting there ever since with the pattern piece still pinned onto it. Hmmm. Bit of a waste of fabric, right? After all, I may end up wearing it for another dress. So, today I finished it. Yay – the first Mending Pile Monday item has been rescued from the pile of forgotten garments and is now in my wardrobe! And here’s the photographic evidence that I did, indeed, finish it off:

To make sure I stick to my self-imposed challenge, I’ll be posting a photo every Monday on what I’ve tacked from the (as previously mentioned, very large) mending pile. Yes indeed.

And maybe, when I make a button for my new Mending Pile Monday challenge, some of you will join me and the mending/alterations/UFO piles around the world will start to diminish, with their contents seeing the light of day once more! Freedom for UFO’s! Yes yes!