My (very basic) sewing skills have been back in use again this weekend.
I am not sure how my youngest son managed to fully rip open the lining of both of the sleeves of his winter coat, but as the damage was only on the inside I felt quite confident that I could easily fix it as my sewing didn’t even have to be pretty.
As it was it only took me about 20 mins to do and that was even with me having to redo one of sleeves as I managed to sew some of the outer sleeve to the inner sleeve?! (I might have got distracted by the TV!)
Unfortunately, the prices of most of the clothes that are produced these days do not truly reflect the full cost of what it actually takes to make them, especially in terms of the huge environmental costs. This particular coat that I bought a few years ago for my eldest son was not only unrealistically cheap but it is also made out of some of the worst types of materials, acrylic and polyester. Not only are they made from fossil fuels but they also require a huge amount of energy to produce, use toxic chemicals in production, release microfibres into the water when they are washed and are pretty much impossible to dispose of responsibly.
So that is why when this coat was initially looking like it was at its end of life, I was so determined to try keep it in use for as long as possible so that the environmental damage that it has already caused need not be for something that’s use is potentially so short lived.