The Mint Needle

My favorite pair of jeans ripped. And I'm not talking about the purposeful rips I bought them with.  An unfortunate bout with cleaning (since there is so much of it going on being quarantined) is all it took to snag the 'already' made fashionable tear into a very unfashionable 4 inch vertical slit. Ouch. But I knew it was fixable. And what a great time to give my already adored pair a quick makeover. Here's how I did it! The first thing was to seal up the vertical tear by stitching it closed.  After measuring the rectangular size needed, all edges were ironed inward so that fraying wasn't a possibility. I placed my patch over the rip and stitched 2 parallel lines. My machine was not small enough to be able to stitch the sides to the denim so I used witchery stitch to fuse them together. In the photo, you can still see my jeans are wet in that area!  Next I started working on the new floral hem. Start by snipping into the seam vertically.  ...

It's 7:27 a.m. The house is quiet. Everyone is asleep except for me and our dog Charlie. I love mornings like this when I can reflect and listen to the calm. I know that everyone is safe, asleep, resting...What a good feeling it is to have in these days and time. Part of me still can't believe what's going on in the world. I feel like I'm living in a crazy dream that's lasting over a year long. In this home, like so many, we were in shock for quite some time. Then reality set in and in our case, the weight of responsibilities shifted again . As some of you know, July will be one year since my chemo and radiation. That means a low immune system. Yuck. My husband gets his wonderful job back of grocery shopping and running errands along with continuing to work since he is a first responder. Add teenage hormones into the mix and well... you get the picture. Like everyone, we keep busy during the day, renovating, working on new projects, school work, until night fall. ...