I love a good pair of blue jeans. My strange, uneven hips are often a source of distress for me when choosing denim, so when I find a pair of pants that fit and look attractive I do all I can to extend their life. I've been known to visit all 7 stages of grief when a beloved pair of dungarees finally meets the scrap pile (Taps playing softly in my mind). After all, they were a labor of love.
Violet has similar issues when it comes to pants. Although the situation is improving, her rear end remains comically inadequate to hold up anything without the assistance of elastic.
She is also long-legged. I have actually abstained completely from purchasing blue jeans for Violet, because they never fit and she never wants to wear them. How is it then that I have a drawer full of jeans in need of alteration? My hand-me-down hook-up dresses her children almost exclusively in pants. She actually has an amusing habit of saving dresses for special occasions and then never putting them on her daughter, due to her crippling fear of stains. I get a lot of jeans in various stages of decomposition and a fair number of dresses that have been worn only once, if at all.
The winter has been cruel enough that I have forced Violet to wear pants way more often than she would like. In order to make them work I have had to do a little creative re-construction.
Holey knees do not keep the wind chill out, so I crafted some decorative patches to reinforce the threadbare denim. These will eventually get the ankle treatment when Violet's legs shoot out again.
The above pants are a 3T, with the elastic taken in an inch. I KNOW! Thankfully, I have a touch of hoarding in my blood and fabric scraps abound for projects like these. I can lengthen and patch pants for years to come.
I think it's a little sad that this kind of clothing repair has fallen out of fashion. It is another casualty of the ultra-cheap clothing market. Walmart, Target, KMart! I'm lookin' at you. I am not innocent. I have purchased many $5 t-shirts in my time, but I really enjoy the challenge of making something last. Violet has an ever evolving wardrobe of "forever" clothes; things that just need a little length or a bit of patching to keep being useful.
Now, if only I could figure out how to make snow boots from recyclables, I'd really be in business.
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