Hats off to the tailor who left me with this chunk of fabric!

Shortly after my daughter was born, I tried on all of my clothes and set aside a few groups. One was ‘stuff that doesn’t quite fit but probably will in a couple of months’. Another was ‘stuff that really doesn’t fit and might never fit, but I hope it will’. The last was ‘stuff that fits but isn’t practical for breastfeeding’ (this was mostly dresses). I put each group into a bag and labelled it and then stored it for later.

I went through the first group a few months ago. Most of it fit, but some of it didn’t due to changes my body had gone through. I put that stuff back in the bag for later. But today, I went through that second bag to see what fit and what didn’t. It was a surprisingly quick task. I managed to sort out a bunch of stuff that I didn’t even try on because I don’t know why I kept it in the first place. I had a bunch of tops that I was never that jazzed about and only wore occasionally, and for some reason I kept them for later. In the spirit of my last post, these got set aside. Most of them are still nice, and I think I can give them away on my city’s free stuff group.

I had some other stuff that still didn’t fit yet and might never fit, but I put back in the bag because I have a hope that they might fit one day – these are mostly clothes I made myself, so I can’t really donate them anyway. Then I had stuff I took out to wear. I had some pieces that surprisingly fit – I say ‘surprisingly’ because some of these were snug before I was pregnant. But, possibly because my weight has shifted in ‘interesting’ ways, these now fit better than they did then. Of the stuff that didn’t quite fit but I still really like, I realized I had a lot there I could alter. I’d prefer to alter rather than just keep it in a bag until it might fit at some undetermined date. I’ve been trying to like the body I have right now – it’s bigger in the waist than I’d like, but it gave me a child and it’s still a ‘healthy’ weight. It’s probably going to sound whiny to some people, but I was very slim and had the ‘ideal’ body for most of my 20s and early 30s. I tried to let go of that in my late 30s, but I never quite managed to love myself. But post-baby, I really want to learn to make peace with my body because I’ve realized that I just don’t need to be a size 0 anymore, and also I’m a mother to a daughter that will see how I treat myself and possibly form her own sense of self worth based on that.

I’m quite pleased with my alterations pile. I have a few possibilities:

• A skirt I got at a thrift store that I really like, but is just a bit snug and the zipper doesn’t go out of the way. At first I thought that I could just take the zipper out, move it down and chop off the waist to the point where it fit (and either make a facing or a new waistband), but at a closer look, I realized that someone had already altered this skirt and taken it in quite a bit! So I have several centimetres of extra fabric at the waist. It unfortunately has a side zipper so I’ll still have to take that out to alter it, but I’m quite pleased with what’s there. I’ll have to see what’s under the waistband, but it feels like there might be some extra fabric there as well so I might be able to keep it. Kudos to the tailor that left all this stuff there! It’s vintage though, and people used to alter their clothes more and often left the door open for future alterations, so to speak. It’s a habit I also want to get into.
• Several button-up shirts I made myself that have darts exactly where they’re too tight. I have a new love of darts. I’ve started sewing myself a dress made from a vintage pattern and I stupidly cut it out without making a test first (which I should really do now that my body is so different than it was a few years ago and how things fit is sometimes a shot in the dark), and it was several centimetres too tight in the waist. But through the magic of the darts, I made it fit comfortably without changing the design at all.
• A wool jumper dress I made with – you guessed it – darts where it’s too tight.
• A wool skirt that hasn’t actually fit for ages, but I tried to squeeze into a bunch of times by wearing shapewear (a practice I never want to do again because I like to be comfortable). I checked this and realized that past me was very lazy and didn’t finish the seams at all – the skirt is fully lined, and I just pressed them open. So, I have quite a bit of room to let it out! We’ll see if it’s enough though.
• A pair of wool trousers with pleats at the waist. I think the waistband will have to go because it has a button on it, but I made these trousers and I’m pretty sure I still have some of the fabric in my scraps.
• A pair of trousers that are only just slightly too tight, but I’d like to be more comfortable. However, I remembered that when I made these, I’d made them slightly too big, and I’d taken them in a few weeks later. I checked and past me had left the original seams there. So I can just take these out where I took them in and the trousers will fit!

This is a lot of alterations to do with a baby, but I figure it’s worth picking away at them in the name of having clothes I really like and that fit well!