My friend gave me this skirt when she could no longer wear it (she’s expecting her second beautiful child to be born in May) and it just needed a teensy bit of fixin’. This kind of satiny ribbon is notorious for fraying. Stare at it wrong and it will unravel right in front of your eyes.

I snipped of the yucky bit and treated the end with Fray Check. I may have gone a little overboard, but I want to make sure it behaves for many trips though the laundry. Let the fray check dry thoroughly before you do anything with it.

It’s a little messy on the inside (you can still see what’s left of the frayed ribbon, where it was once attached in the seam allowance), but I just wove the ribbon back through the lace where it was supposed to be and stitched it down in the seam allowance.

This is the first quilt I ever made (I was eight) and after pretty much constant use since then, one of the corners in the patch work has come loose. It’s just a little spot, so I’m going to jump on it now, before it turns into a big mess.

My thread is a little bit brighter than the blue fabric, but it won’t show when I’m finished anyway.

I’m knotting my thread inside the seam allowance so it won’t show.

I’ve tucked the tail of my thread to the inside of the quilt, and brought my needle out a bit below where the seam has come loose.

Now I’ll take one short stitch in one fabric…

…and line up the exit of the first stitch with the entry of the next, and take another stitch.

And repeat…

…while tucking the raw edge of the fabric under and continuing to cover the original stitching line.

When I get to the corner, I take a couple whip stitches to keep everything secure, and knot my thread.

Good as new. I’ll probably hand quilt this throw when I get my quilting frame set up. Right now it’s just tied, but with the frequency that this gets washed, it could use the extra help.

We’ve all been hit with whatever cold Erik brought home, so I’ve been taking it easy and not getting much done. I did manage to get a few more buttons sewn onto a little sweater my mom got at a thrift store.

This sweater has a rather eclectic mix of motifs (rocket ship, dinosaur, candy cane, reindeer, clown, heart, etc.) so I think the new strawberry buttons will blend right in.

Erik is really really hard on his clothes for work, but we try really hard to not replace them until they’re beyond all hope of repair. But even when they get to that point, I cut them up and use them for something else (check out this lunch bag I made last year). I do my best to spot damage before it spreads, because before I know it a tiny loose thread becomes a missing button, or a tiny hole gets caught on something and becomes a major tear.

This is one of his undershirts, and the stitching at the back of the neck has popped in several places. It doesn’t show when he’s wearing his uniform, but even so, I know it’s just a matter of time before a loose thread catches on something, and whoops! There goes the neck band.

I’m using the number 3 stitch function on my machine, called a lightning stitch (also called a stretch stitch). If you’re sewing machine doesn’t have presets, just set it for a very narrow, short zig-zag stitch for a similar effect.

I did match the thread on the outside, but I’m using up some more odd-colored bobbin thread on the inside of the neck.

This is one of Erik’s sweatshirts. The coverstitching at the hem is coming loose across the back. Even though it looks like only one row is affected, the lower row is not really attached any more, either.

See? The left side is all fuzzy where the missing stitches are, and the right side is still smooth and tight where both rows of stitches are still in tact. I went ahead and removed the “fuzzy” stitches, since I know they’ll just fall out eventually anyway.

A few drops of Fray Check on each end of the stitches (do the inside, too!) will keep them from unraveling any more.