Some odds and ends sewing

My youngest inherited this backpack from his older brother who had gotten it as a freebie, or in the parlance of our household, “ A fleebie”. Unlike most fleebies, this was actually an excellent, well designed backpack. Unfortunately, after nearly two years of use, the main zipper broke in , as my son reported to me, four different ways.

We looked at backpacks in the store while we bought my son new sneakers, but none of the backpacks in the store suited my son. So I knew I had to settle into the pretty unpleasant job of replacing the zipper.

For those of you who don’t sew, zippers are usually installed in things like backpacks early in the construction process. It is much easier to install zippers before the bag is constructed.
I ripped out the old zipper with it’s four failed areas and began to attempt to sew the zipper in by machine. I got one side installed mostly by machine and then had to resort to hand stitching.

If I were a nicer mother, I would have picked out all of the old stitching. But I’m not. I also don’t think that my son cares.

The metal zipper didn’t move as smoothly as one would like. I blew my son’s mind when I suggested that he rub a bar of soap on the zipper teeth to get the zipper to work more smoothly. “ You are kidding me, aren’t you?” he asked. he was impressed with the old school fix.

I guess that the soap on the zipper trick impressed him enough for him to listen to me when I suggested that he cook his pasta in milk. ( We had too much milk in the fridge and he wanted pasta for dinner) . This old cookbook method of creating a sort of a cream sauce really impressed my son. He added salt, pepper and then gilded the lily with some cheese.

My watchband had seen better days. I have a bit of a nickel allergy and have begun to use ribbon watch bands which keeps weird rashes from showing up on my wrist.

The buckle is from a store bought ribbon watchband. The ribbon was part of a close out find. I think that the gold and black look pretty spiffy with the watch face.

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sarah in nyc

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