I couldn't, after all, return the too large jeans I bought online. So last night I decided to make them smaller.
Seam rippers are wonderful: They let you turn a pair of pants partly into bits which look like something from outer space (three-dimensional mental rotation abilities are a must, of course).
Sewing machines are also wonderful, except the one I have. It is very ancient, and its technology is a bit like the Model T Ford technology in cars compared to today's Mercedes Bentz.
What's nice about that is my ability to fix everything in the machine, to clean it, to oil it, and to regulate all the various tensions etc on my very own. What's not so nice about it is that it runs like a tractor over rocky ground, even when it is perfectly tuned, instead of the way a Maserati runs on a smooth highway (which would be the metaphor for modern machines) so that I have to physically restrain its operations by half-lying on the fabric, clinging on to it for dear life, while vigorously stomping on the foot pedal.
Never mind. I managed to put the jeans back together, considerably smaller, and all I lost in the operations was one belt loop (and one sewing machine needle which fell on the wood floor and disappeared in one of the cracks). But the only thread I had in sufficient amounts was too light a color. My hypothesis was that it would sink into the fabric so as not to be noticeable.
That hypothesis failed. So I took a pen and colored all the stitches carefully darker! We shall see if the ink is water-proof. If it's not, I can just color the seams in again.
I am almost ready for the post-apocalypse life after Trump, where we make our own clothes and plant our own potatoes in our tiny window boxes. And make our own shoes out of corrugated cardboard.
Speaking of cardboard, I finally went through all the cardboard boxes full of pieces of fabric. They are my embroidery stash, saved over the years in case creativity suddenly strikes and makes it obligatory for me to finish that embroidery of the Happy Vampire Family (they all have red horns in the half-finished work).
Now most of the tiny pieces of cloth have been sent to recycling. That is very sad, but ordinary goddesses don't have the guest room closet completely overtaken by bits of fabric from old clothes and flea market finds.
Here's one example of what I have done with those fabrics in the past:
