Mend your clothes (also no one is looking)
I bought this dress/cardigan more than a decade ago at Target for $7.50 It’s been a wardrobe staple since then. When I weighed less (I mean, it was 10 years ago!), it was a great mini dress to wear with tights and boots. Now it’s more of a long cardigan, but I still love it.
Unfortunately, as sometimes happens with clothes that old, there was recently a spot under one of the arm pits where the stitching came undone. I was, as you can imagine, heartbroken. I was afraid this piece was completely done for. But on a closer inspection, I realized this was something I could fix… sort of.
I am hardly any kind of seamstress. I can sew on a button and I once hemmed a pair of jeans. I don’t own a sewing machine, nor do I ever plan to. But there were a few things going in my favor when it came to mending this piece. For one thing, the unstitching was in the armpit — not exactly a spot that comes in for a lot of scrutiny! For another, the two main colors were black and red. The black would be easy to match with thread. And the issue wasn’t with the knitting itself; it was just a spot where two separate pieces had been joined together.
This is the result:
Does it look perfect? Oh hell no. Not by any stretch of the imagination does that look perfect. Will I wear this to tea with the queen? Nope! But will I wear this to, say, the movies, or the grocery store, or the drug store, or to lunch with friends (you know, when going out becomes a thing again)? Absolutely! You know why? Because this is good enough. And it’s okay to do a good enough job on something like this. And it saved me a $7.50 dress, one which I’ve gotten way more use of than a mere seven dollars and fifty cents, and which means I won’t have to spend another $7.50 that I would rather keep in my pocket.
Also, again, this is the armpit. If this were something right on the front of the dress, I would be a lot pickier. But if anyone is staring at my armpit there’s obviously a lot more going on than just questions about a mending job that doesn’t look one hundred percent. At that point I will be looking for an excuse to get away from whoever is paying that much attention to that part of my body.
But more than that, let me tell you a secret: No one is looking at you as hard as you’re looking at yourself. Does that sound like a bummer to you? Quite the contrary! Knowing this is a superpower! Sure, *I* know that I sewed up that spot that came undone. But who else knows that? Well, I mean, you know it now, but who among the people I encounter in daily life will know it? Who is going to look at my clothes with the same level of scrutiny that I do? Let me reassure you, that person is rare indeed.
Knowing this is hugely freeing to me. It means, for example, that my homemade fixes are just fine — they save me money and time (shopping can suck up a lot of hours, especially when you’re as cheap as I am) that I’d rather spend on other things. Reading a good book, snuggling with my cat, even eating a nice meal all bring me more joy than needlessly spending money on something I already have.
Give it a try. Mend that button. Will it look perfect? Who cares, it’s a button. Zipper on your jeans needs some TLC? You can totally take care of that. Or how about the thighs of your jeans — getting a little thin? Do some quick darning. None of it has to be professional level. We’re not talking about, say, altering your wedding dress (it’s okay to hire a professional for that one!). Just learn how to do the small fixes, learn to let go of the idea that everyone is watching you, learn how to spend your time and your money where they matter the most instead. It adds up, I promise.
