Mending (Patreon)

The stitching holding my coat pockets together disintegrated pretty spectacularly a few weeks ago and every time I’d have to fish around in the lining of my coat to retrieve my phone I would tell myself “Erika, you should sew this back up” but I never did.

Twenty years before this whole coat issue, I had a long, lightweight, floral dress that I wore as a teenager during the summers in Seattle.

All my possessions from that time in my life have been held hostage for a decade now (have I mentioned I’m estranged?) but, through a miracle, a family member managed to reunite me with a few boxes of my old belongings and seeing these artifacts from another lifetime ago was about as nostalgic and surreal an experience as you can imagine.

This wasn’t my favorite dress, I wasn’t especially attached to it, but I liked it well enough then and I like it well enough now, though it’s just not my style any more. 

To shorten this story: I turned a bit of my old dress into my new pockets. The first one is definitely a bodge job, the second one still deeply flawed but a huge improvement, and, hey, I’ve got a coat with functional pockets again, woo-hoo! 

All hand sewn, because not only do I not have a sewing machine, but I wouldn’t know how to use it if I did have one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

What I lack in sewing appliances in my life, I make up for with cat hair on my coat.

(If you are thinkin' to yourself, "That coat looks familiar...?", you are correct! It is the same coat I drew in the Best Things of 2018 comic at the end of last year)

(((A version of this was originally posted over on Instagram.)))