#the old one could not compete

[balkanradfem]

Fixing pants with overly-tight waistband

So, I accidentally found some warm winter pants in a box under my bed! I was extremely happy to find them because I've been out in freezing temperatures in jeans, my legs getting red and irritated from the cold. However, these pants I found, there's something interesting about them; they've got their waistband completely cut off.

I have no memory of cutting that off, but I'm 100% sure it was me, because I know what my line of thinking was. The waistband was too tight, and the pants were high-waisted, so I thought, hey, I just need to cut off this tight part and then the pants will be wearable. And then, after I cut if off, I found out, that no, you can't just cut off the piece of pants that keeps them on your body. They slide off. So after that bold move I just abandoned them in a box. I had no confidence that I could fix them, but this has changed! I am not any better at sewing than I was back then, but my confidence is through the roof, I believe I can not only fix this but make them the most comfortable pair of pants I own.

I rummaged around to find some materials I could use for a new waistband, and I was purposefully picking materials that are very stretchy, soft and warm. I want a soft stretchy waistband! I ended up being specifically drawn to these 2 black sleeves; they're from a sweater, super warm and stretchy, and also durable. I also found an elastic that I ripped out of some sweatpants in the past because it was too tight.

I decided to make the elastic longer by adding a piece of cotton fabric in the middle, and I sewed that together, I feel like it doesn't matter if there's some normal cloth in there. It won't be visible anyway.Now, to make those sleeves into a waistband. I figured out I could do it without cutting them into pieces of fabric; they're already sewn into tubes. So instead I cut them to be the same length as my elastic, and sewed them together into one long tube (I made a mistake at first and flipped one sleeve on the wrong side. But I redid it and now they're good).

Now my long tube can hold the elastic in it! But then I decided, wait, I would prefer if I just folded those tubes into a new, doubly thicker tube, because I really want as many warm layers as possible on my hips (don't wanna get cold). So the tube is folded, and elastic is placed in.

So now I needed to sew these sleeves into a new tube, with the elastic inside, and I figured, hey, I could just sew them onto the pants at the same time, so I don't have to sew that part multiple times.

I lined up the tube with the pants, and you can see I very haphazardly just sewed them on with a normal running stitch; I was mostly doing that to try it out, and see how it would look like all put together. I then sewed the elastic together in a circle, and closed the tubes together as well. The waistband at this point was shorter in length than the cut off hem of the pants, so I was lightly scrunching the pants while sewing, to match the length, knowing once I put them on this will not be visible and even out. Then I tried them on, and while it looked okay, my running stitch came apart, and the waistband separated!

You can see here how half of the waistband is off. I was so focused on scrunching the pants I forgot to make the stitch adjusted to the stretchy fabric.

I know sewing machines have a special stitch that is used on stretchy fabric so the stitch itself is stretchy, but I never found out how to do something like that by hand, and I was at that point, in a room with no internet so I wasn't gonna find out. Instead, I invented my own little stitch that would do a good-enough job. In the second picture you can see how every few stitches, there's thread just going around the edge, that was my trick. This way, when I'm stretching the waistband, instead of the thread breaking, it will pull from these areas where I've wrapped it around, because it's a bit more loose in there and can be tightened without breaking. I've also sewn it in 4 sections, so its not one continuous thread going through the same waistband.

Once I did that, I was mostly done! Here's the pants mended and how they look on me.

I've converted them into sweatpant-like garment, which, yes, good. But! I was wrong about one thing. That elastic, even though I added some length on it, was still too tight, making me feel uncomfortable and tight. So. I opened up the waistband again. Pulled the elastic out. Stitched it back, and tried it on. And decided to keep it like that. This fix didn't need an elastic, I was just paranoid that my new waistband wouldn't hold without one – but it was stretchy and firm enough to hold without any issues! They look just the same as with the elastic in them. I've since worn them outside and they're great!

This entire fix maybe took an hour and now I have comfortable pants to wear all winter. 10/10 recommend trying it out.

Also this is not an official way how to fix a waistband, I've done it before by just adding extra fabric to the waistband that was already there, and it's a lot less work, however... this works too. If you've.. chaotically cut the whole waistband off. Completely salvageable.

[silveredsticks]

Milwaukee Admirals beat the Chicago Wolves 2-1 on 26th October, & that seems to be the first night Blanks got the A

[andthespidersfrommars]

the amount of love, admiration and respect I hold for imane khelif

[fancyfade]

Batman vs Robin #4

Wait would never let that (Damian breaking Nezha's will and succeeding in something) happen because he's scared of teenagers, Batman

[hecatesbroom]

Blanche's grandma's place is the only place she felt consistently loved in... no I'm fine. I'm fine

[tricoufamily]

no ok we finished episode 2 what they have done to katara is unforgivable. they have completed zapped every ounce of her personality away. why. why. look how they massacred my girl

[apocalypticdemon]

I would say I have no explanation for this, but uh. I really do. Behold: the first ideas for a Terror IndyCar AU that has possessed me for the last 36 straight hours. It would not leave me alone until I put some of it to paper.

Behold: Crozier as an established, relatively liked, if cynical, driver, upstart rookie James Fitzjames, and Hickey, who is, as always, totally normal and not causing problems.

The art is rushed, but I needed to purge the demons as fast as I could

[un-pearable]

the sheer volume of titans tower aus are the most baffling thing to me because fic fandom treats it like this Core Event that his entire life is oriented around… they always treat tim like he’s a newbie who just picked up a bo staff five minutes ago when that couldn’t be further from the truth. he’s existed for over a decade at that point. he’s had over a hundred issues of a solo, not even touching his appearances anywhere else. in universe, he’s been robin for at least 3-4 years. he had AN ENTIRE OTHER TEAM who’s series ran for three years and had comics wide crossovers twice. he was enlisted in a war. he’s time traveled. he’s been to apocalips. he’s not a little baby who’s in too deep that kid’s been to space.

[choatic-bumblebee-agenda]

Yesterday my religion teacher asked me if I thought it was okay, morally, to be a homemaker, and it's making me wonder what kind of people he's had the misfortune of conversing with lately

[cosmogyros]

I swear to God, modern music production is so FLAT that it physically hurts to listen to. There's no spatial depth to it, no air, no sense of this music actually being performed in a real three-dimensional space. Please can we bring back breath and air and space in music production?

[whentherewerebicycles]

ok well i drove 50 min in moderately heavy traffic to get to this place only to discover that they accidentally sent my security credential to the washington dc office instead of the washington state office 🫠 then had to drive 35 min back (less traffic, at least?). kind of an annoying way to waste a morning but whatever i listened to music and thought about my story idea in traffic so at least there’s that. unfortunately this means i will have to go back sometime in the near future once they get it shipped over.

i spent a couple hours this morning prepping for the campus visit but then started overwhelming myself a little bit so i think i’m gonna gently dial that back for today and return to it later. i honestly think i could do most of the visit tomorrow and it would be just fine. the only parts that feel like big question marks are the job talk i have to give to faculty (on a prompt that will not be provided until a week or so beforehand) and an “informal workshop or something like that” i have to lead with students (they haven’t settled the details yet). but like, both of those will be fine! i’m just raring to get started on the prep work yknow and not having clear parameters means i will do the classic jes thing of going deeper and deeper into various rabbitholes until someone stops me lol.

to try to give myself some parameters:

in general, i want to approach the research/prep work less as “i must do this otherwise i won’t be prepared!!! what if someone grills me on the research on this hyper-specific topic!!!!” and more as “would doing this research be interesting to me and useful to my work as a teacher even if i weren’t prepping for an interview? if so, proceed.”

buzzwords and specific citations don’t matter! what matters is my ability to clearly communicate my big picture values as an educator and administrator, the concrete things i’ve done to enact those values in my past work, and the vision i have for building on that work in the future in this specific institutional context. if i start feeling overwhelmed or like i am beginning to flounder, i return to my core values, my concrete actions, and my vision. i trust that in an interview or job talk context i’ll be able to draw on specific examples to illustrate those things or use my deeper knowledge to answer trickier questions if they arise. 

to keep myself focused on the high-level / big-picture philosophy i want to convey, i think it might be useful to actually make a list of core values or guiding beliefs - so that i have a VERY clear sense of what i’m trying to communicate and a very concrete document to refer back to when i’m feeling a little at sea. i think that should probably be the first thing i do and the main focus of this week, before i let myself delve any further into researching random little topics that might come up in some hypothetical interview situation lol.

i want to remember something macky said, which is that most people would prefer to talk and work with someone who’s curious about the world they’re entering rather than hyper-focused on explaining how awesome they are and how much stuff they’ve done in the past. so i don’t want to let my little insecurities about whether i’m Really Qualified For This Job lead me to knowledge-dump or talk endlessly about myself to try to “prove” something. i want to go into this experience with the calm, grounded belief that this is work i am well equipped to do, so that i can keep the campus visit itself focused on engaging with students/faculty, asking lots of thoughtful questions about the school’s work and priorities, and just in general showing that i can be a good colleague/teammate who people would enjoy working with.

[prettiest-pearls]

All I got from the Barbie movie is that Barbie and ken are bi for bi

[fingertipsmp3]

Being friends with me must be exhausting fr. Imagine waking up and seeing that your dumbest friend sent you a whole ass rant starting with “SOS” and the salient points are there’s a guy with swoopy hair at her work and she doesn’t know how to deal

[bilboyagathechickenfootedhobbit]

I have hosted three small boys for a weekend-long sleepover and have completely forgotten what silence is like.

Quiet? Never heard of her.

Peace? A distant memory.

At least the one stopped being afraid of skinwalkers after the first night.

[lokilysolbitch]

me: hm i've been noticing gluten affects me worse than i thought

me: *eats gluten bc i haven't fully switched to primarily gf food yet*

me: *feels worse than usual*

me: woah o.0 i did not see that coming,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[trannyradfem]

back in highschool we used to have random cuddle puddles with all the girls at art club for some reason but I'm ngl I kinda really miss that rn

oh to have an edible kick in while I'm playing with my friends hair while she infodumps to me about homestuck

it was a simpler time. fuck I feel old

...also how tf did I not figure out why so many of my female friends were bi or lesbians... cmon get ur shit together, me!!

(jk tho that would've been impossible cuz dad tried to abuse the gay out of me so much i almost died on several occasions </3 I genuinely would've rather been raped by awful men on repeat than for him to ever harm a girl I loved ever again)