Altering Thrifted Blazers for a personalized fit

Even though I make most of my wardrobe, I still love thrifting, and sometimes come across wonderful jackets and blazers that fit well and would be both expensive and time consuming to make for myself. This is one garment I often buy because of these elements. I recently found a houndstooth blazer, in petite sizing, that is perfect except for the sleeve length -- that is always an issue for me. But it's an easy fix, I usually just have to tuck the existing hem depth up and stitch it and it's the right length for me. 

With this jacket, there were two non-functioning buttons on the sleeve vent. So I took off the bottom button and moved it above the other one, about the same distance as the original. This gave me lots of room to fold up the existing hem and catch-stitch it. Easy fix. 

I also found a purple skirt suit for $15, which fits in beautifully with my fall colour scheme. The jacket has interesting details and fits nicely, again just a sleeve length adjustment required. This jacket had a simple sleeve with no details at the cuff, so very easy to shorten in my slapdash way. The sleeves were quite long here, so I had to fold up 2". I carefully catch-stitched this to the lining so that nothing was showing or pulling on the right side. It's quite amazing how just ensuring the sleeves are the right length makes the whole jacket look so much better! 

The matching skirt needs more work though, and it will be a bit more complicated. I need to shorten it and narrow the waist too, and maybe add some pockets! More on that next week. With, hopefully, photos of the whole altered suit!