Mending and Winning

When I first thought about this post, as I was driving to work (I do a lot of writing in my head at various times, driving alone being one of them) the original thought was that it was about 2 separate things; the mending I had done on the weekend and the neat prize I won a couple of Monday's ago (being that I take forever to post things.)

But as I continued to drive it occurred to me that my mending was kind of like winning too. Hmmm How? Well, I'll explain in a bit.

This weekend I decided to get some mending done that had needed doing for a while. First up was Miss S's pj pants that she got for Christmas a couple of years ago. The girls both wear those pj pants a lot so they're already wearing thin and Miss S caught hers on something and gave them a lovely tear.
I also had her jeans to fix...again! I swear I will never buy jeans from Sirens again! Never never never! I have no idea how many times I have fixed those 2 silly things but I swear they're going to drive me nuts. Then I decided that maybe I should do some mending for myself.

I know! What a concept!
A mom that actually does something for herself every once in  a while. LOL It's so rare I just had to write about it.

I have a t-shirt I bought quite a while ago that is a lovely colour and even has some visual interest with embroidery/surface work. It's a good colour for me and much nicer than most of my wardrobe (or at least so my kids tell me) because of the embroidery. The problem? The backside of all the embroidery and stitches Drives Me NUTS! It itches like crazy and I can't stand to wear the thing for more than about 1/2 an hour. So it has sat in the sewing room since the first time I wore it.

Saturday I found some very light weight knit that came from...well, ...goodness knows where! I honestly don't remember when or where I got it (yeah, I'm a sewing hoarder, does that surprise anyone? Not anyone that knows me, trust me lol). Anyway I took that and basted some pieces on the back of the embroidery area just basting around the general area leaving lots of room around the design to work with.

Then, while watching some TV I did some very tiny stitches from  the right side to really sew it down. When that was done, I went around to the back again, took out the basting stitches and trimmed the "embroidery cover" a little closer to the little stitches.

It doesn't look like anything great from the back but I wore it to work this week, a couple of people noticed the "new" shirt and complimented me on it AND it didn't itch a bit!

Yay! So I won there for sure; a new shirt to wear that didn't cost me a penny and time spent watching TV that I didn't eat. That's a huge thing for me and something I always have to be careful of. Win and win!

Now on to my winning something from somewhere else (rather than my closet).

If you read the Sew Weekly (and if you don't, you should!) then you've seen the amazing pin cushions she's been posting about for people to win. I have to say that it totally blew me away the things that people have thought up and done for pin cushions. I thought there were maybe 2 kinds and I can't be happier to have been proven wrong! There are some increadible, gorgeous, funny, cute and/or adorable pin cushions out there folks. You'd be amazed. Even more amazing for me.....I won one! Can you imagine?
This is the gorgeous one that I won;

Beautiful huh? I love the colour especially. A good 1/3 of my wardrobe is red so it's kind of obvious I like it, wouldn't you say?
If you want to see more of Jane's lovely creations check out her Etsy store Jane Foster Designs
I really like her Doves here.  The detail is divine!

Now I can't give you a review of Jane's pin cushions but I will as soon as my little parcel get's here.
In the meantime I'm going to work on a review of a scarf I won earlier this year that richly deserves the glowing review it will get. Stay tuned for that!

Ta