A month ago, we hosted a guest and I was stripping the bed to wash the sheets. I discovered our fitted sheet had completely lost its elastic and had turned into a giant flat sheet. It wasn't an expensive or special queen sheet set we'd used, but considering the fabric itself was in decent condition, it would be a shame to retire this sheet simply because the elastic went out.
Now replacing a queen fitted sheet runs anywhere from $10-$50+ depending on where you're buying it from and what deal you can find. We were definitely not looking to spend a lot of money to replace this fitted sheet. I got the grand idea to buy elastic and replace it myself. It couldn't be that hard, right?
Elastic was cheap. I could get yards and yards of the stuff for maybe $5-$7. The amount I actually needed for this project amounted to probably $1 of the actual yardage if not less. The rest of the project was the time and ingenuity I needed to have in order to replace the elastic.
Materials: fitted sheet, new elastic, safety pins, scissors, sewing materials
*I was gifted a sewing machine toy when I was about 6-8 years old. Sadly, I never used the machine and it has been long gone over the years. I did keep the sewing kit which came with the machine and it is still my sewing kit today, the one seen above.*
I spent some time pondering this project before actually starting. I knew the elastic was sewn into the edge of the sheet in a little channel. Assuming they did it cheaply, the elastic should not have been sewed into the fabric but would be loose all the way around the perimeter. This meant all I had to do was cut a small slit, pull the old elastic out, and thread new elastic in. Easy, right?
The whole process ended up taking just over an hour, which relatively speaking, even for someone who knew what they were doing, is pretty efficient. The longest part of the project was actually removing the old elastic from the edge. I made the mistake of cutting the slit without pinning the elastic in place next to my slit. As a result, when the elastic was cut, what little tension was left pulled the elastic deeper into the channel away from the slit I had just cut. It probably took a solid 20 minutes just to retrieve the end of the elastic to start pulling it out.
I can't tell you exactly how I did it. I ended up finagling it with a safety pin and a needle. Miraculously after numerous tries, the elastic peeped out with the safety pin and I could start pulling it out.
After removing the old elastic, I began to thread the new elastic in. This part, I had premeditated for a long time. I knew threading anything through a narrow channel was not easy, so I'd make sure I had this figured out before I started this project.
I clipped a safety pin to the head of the elastic I would thread into the channel. The safety pin served as my "pusher" to get the elastic through the channel because the elastic itself is too flexible to put pressure. As I stuck the safety pin into the channel, I'd scrunch the fabric over the safety pin and then un-scrunch it on the other side, productively moving the safety pin attached to the elastic through the narrow channel about an inch at a time. It's effectively how any kind of caterpillar or worm propels itself through movement. Although still time consuming, having this technique greatly sped up this process.
After successfully threading the elastic through, we had to properly space out the elastic around the perimeter and then sew up the slit I originally cut. This was a much faster process and it was so satisfying to be able to fix this fitted sheet with my own two hands.
An hour of my time is worth more than a $10 sheet. An hour of my time is actually worth more than a $50 sheet. But considering it was during the night time, I wouldn't be teaching or earning money anyway, and I was able to do it while watching tv sitting on my bed in my bath robe, I'd consider the money savings worth it.
Consumerism and convenience has turned us into people who look for the quick-fix answer. We trash the old/broken and buy something new to replace it. And while I understand the need for simplicity in our lives and less mental clutter for our own sanity, I also understand the need to value the things we have and not be wasteful if we can help it. What's one way you can be a little more scrappy?
