Writing Receipts For Your Customers

Some of you are sewing or crafting for other people. If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend a lot of money on supplies. I wanted to give my customers a recept, but I didn’t need them to look like a beautiful keepsake. Chances are, most people throw theirs away. In fact, some just [...]

Mending What the Dog Chewed Up (Part Two)

In the last post, we looked at a technique to mend practically anything. But in that scenario, we used the first of two Vera Bradley bags that a customer brought to me to fix. Her dog had chewed them both to pieces. Today, let’s look at the other bag. It has bigger issues.               [...]

Mending What the Dog Chewed Up (Part One)

A customer brought me 2 Vera Bradley bags (purses) that her dog chewed up and asked me if I could repair them. She really didn’t have high expectations; she figured anything I could do was better than what they looked like. But, she didn’t know that I have a favorite mending technique that earns rave [...]

Shortening Long Sleeves

Are the sleeves on your shirts too long? Shortening sleeves is a quick alteration. This technique will work for mens or ladies shirts that have cuffs on them. Let me show you what I did on this purple shirt:                       There are two rows of stitching on [...]

Changing a Garment From Zippered to Buttoned

I have a customer who loathes zippers in her robes. So, she asked me if I could take the zipper out and put in buttons. No problem, I answered. It’s no problem because I made sure that she understood that she was going to lose some of the width in the front. Putting in buttonholes and buttons means [...]

Shortening a Zipper From the Top

In all my years of altering clothes, I had never thought of altering a zipper from the top. Usually, when a dress doesn’t zip all the way up, I try to let out the side seams at the bust area. Often, I sew in gussets. Gussets are pie shaped wedges of fabric sewn into the [...]