Recently I was wearing one of my Shelley bras, and something just didn’t feel right about the back. I felt around and I was all done up, so really didn’t know what was going on there. So I had to wait until I got home and could look in a mirror to see what was going on.

This is what I saw! Well, that’s just isn’t working, is it? I knew I would want to repair this bra right away, as it’s one of my favorites. It didn’t take me long to realize the elastic I used at the back just wasn’t strong enough to hold … well, it wasn’t strong enough hold anything.

I had this elastic in my stash, and hadn’t used it at all because it was so flimsy.

You can see here, I had a fair amount of it too. I hadn’t used it on any bras because it just stretched out; it didn’t recover. I decided this is not anything I wanted in my stash, and it wasn’t good enough to send to a friend. It has left my home and is where it belongs now.

There are times when a repair or fix needs to happen, and after carefully sewing things on so they won’t come off, I just don’t want to rip things apart. I felt that way after double stitching my  hooks and eyes on, and zigzagging the edges as well. So, what other options are there for a repair?

For my repair on this, I ripped the old elastic out up to the hooks and eyes. Then I trimmed it really close to them. I butted the new stronger elastic up to where I’d trimmed the old away and zigzagged that first. This allowed me to not need to remove the hooks and eyes, which weren’t the problem anyway.

Then I attached the rest of the new elastic to the band. I’ve worn this a couple of times now and no problems at all. Bad old elastic!

This week I finished another skirt. I live in skirts in the summer. In fact, I have my next skirt all cut out waiting to be sewn. Skirts are my summer staple.

If you haven’t tried the Flirt Skirt yet, I really recommend it. It’s a very comfortable skirt to wear, and I get so many compliments on it. It’s that back part. The part I call the ‘flirt’. That’s the part people are saying, ‘Turn around’. ‘Did you make your skirt?’ ‘What pattern is that?’ It’s definitely fun.

This skirt has no stretch in the material, so I changed the pattern a bit – instead of using my knit sloper, I used the woven one to determine how big to make the pattern. The denim I’d used before only had a bit of stretch, so I didn’t need to adjust this one that much. This is a light-weight cotton with a denim look.

And from the side with that flirty part showing.

No photos of me in my skirt just yet – my photographer is absent at the moment, and has been too busy to be my photographer this week.

Happy creating!