BrambleStitches

I made these pants about three years ago (the pattern is Jalie 2445) and I’ve worn them two or three times a week, every week, since then. They are tired, the nap is starting to wear, and there are a couple of accidental bleach spots on one leg, but they’re still so comfortable. I never intended for them to be seen, they were just meant to be nice loungey pajamas. In fact, I never even hemmed them (they were a little short, and since this fabric doesn’t ravel, I left them alone). So the dilemma is this: do I spend a lot of time to mend these “right” or do I quickly take care of things and not worry about appearances?

The problem: The seam that holds the drawstring casing to the waistband has popped in several places.

The obstacle: To mend this “right” I’d have to undo four rows of stitching all the way around the waist in this fuzzy fabric. If you’ve ever tried to rip out stitches in any kind of thick, napped fabric, you’ll know that this is a time consuming job.

The solution: I decided that since these are pajamas, and showing their age, and not likely to be passed on to anyone else (I plan to wear them into the ground, so to speak), that I would just do a quick and dirty fix to make them wearable again. I just serged around the top of the waist. I lost about 1/4 inch of rise, but at least now they look finished. Even though this might not have been the right way to fix these particular pants, they certainly look better now than they did in my mending pile.

Mending

Last week I saw that this shirt was missing a button, and I figured it would be a huge production to get down my button jars (yes, three huge ones) and look for something that matched, or, failing that, to find five matching buttons to replace them all. So I procrastinated…

…until I discovered the extra button sewed to the inside of the placket. I am so impressed. I just don’t see this kind of thing on clothes anymore, and it’s especially unusual for baby and children’s clothes.

Use a pin as a spacer and sew over it while attaching your button. It might seem like a fiddly detail, but consider that when you button the shirt, those extra layers of fabric have to sit behind the button. If you sew the button on flush to the shirt, you’ll be causing unnecessary stress to the cloth where the button is attached, and it will be more likely to just rip out next time, rather than fall off.

Mending

Just a wee little postie today. The man is sick with something, so I spent most of the afternoon keeping the children quiet so he could get some sleep. Poor guy.

I made this dress for Olga when she was two, and the hem touched the tops of her feet. Now she’s almost four and the hem is above her knees. I love this little dress, but it’s starting to get too small for my growing girl. (You can see here how short the sleeves are on her.) If I don’t hurry and fix it now, it will be too late. Like the brown dress, the facing pops up here, too.

Black is pretty forgiving, so my stitches don’t show at all, except for the couple I had to take in the pansy.

The facing is tacked down all around, now.

The under arm seam had popped, too, probably because Olga is getting so big. I stitched over it on my machine.

Mending

I wore the knee out of my favorite pair of jeans recently, so I wanted to get to them while it was still winter. I’ve never met anyone else who thought patching knees was fun. But now you have. That’s right: me. I’ve taken the art of knee patching to a whole new level, and now you’ll know my secret, too. Or at least you’ll know how carried away I can get when I discover that the super technique I thought up during a caffeine high actually works! Click the picture below to watch the full tutorial (opens as a slideshow in a new window). *Whoops! Something was wrong with the slideshow earlier, so if it doesn’t work click here to go through the tutorial manually.*

Mending

I really only singled out these dresses for the mending pile because of the way the facings always stick out. I hate that. I made the black dress, and I should have known better than to leave the facing free. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that each dress was in need of a “real” repair, too.

To tack down the facing, first knot the thread in the underside of the facing. Then make careful slip stitches so they won’t show on the outside of the dress.

The embroidery was conveniently placed, so I stitched through the bobbin thread instead.

Here’s the little hole I discovered, which is just barely big enough for a tiny finger to poke through. Another rule of mending: Always fix it before your children discover it. Or you’ll be sorry.

This is such a tiny little hole, that I’m trying a technique I’ve never used before called a weaving darn. To work this darn, first stitch across the hole in one direction (i.e. vertically), remembering to securely anchor your stitches in the “good” fabric a ways in from the hole. Then “weave” your stitches across in the other direction (horizontally) until you’ve literally woven a patch in place.

I filled in a little more after this photo.

And there it is. You can still see the spot a little, but it’s in a fairly inconspicuous spot.

Mending

This is the warmest quilt we own. My mom rescued it from a thrift store for a few dollars, and for the last eight years at least, it’s been on my bed. It’s a queen-sized whole-cloth quilt, made sometime in the 70s, most likely. The batting is polyester, and here on the edge where the binding has come loose, it has torn and bunched up quite a bit. I’ll rearrange it as best I can before I put it back together, but this will always be a slightly lumpy spot.

There are lots of these tiny holes, and quite a few spots where the quilting stitches have come out. I imagine that in a former life, someone didn’t love this quilt very much, and let their puppy chew on it. The holes seem to be clustered together like tiny milk teeth nips. I’ll save both of these tasks for another day. First things first.

My thread is a bit light, but this is on the back of the quilt, so I’m not too worried about it. Actually, this is the same spool I used for yesterday’s mending. This is just a simple slip stitch. 

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Olga is always close by whenever I’m working. She took this photo.

The original quilting stitches are done in a medium length running stitch like this. I’m not going to get too much into quilting today, but I do want to secure the loose batting near the binding mend. I’m breaking one of my rules today: Always mend like with like. All I have today is polyester thread, so that’s what I’m using. When I get a chance, I’ll pick up some matching cotton thread to do all of the quilting, and I’ll pull out this row that I just did.

But that’s all for today, because somebody got sleepy. 

Mending

Today while rummaging through my drawer to find something to keep the rain off my hair, I remembered that the hem was starting to fall loose on my favorite scarf. I happen to have matching thread for this fix which, despite the amount of sewing I do, is rare. The original hem is a very simple rolled hem held in place with a running stitch visible from the right side, but invisible on the rolled side of the fabric.

I’m anchoring my thread well back from the repair. When working with very delicate fabrics like this it’s important to use a slender needle so you won’t leave holes behind. It is a bit of a misconception however that you need a very sharp needle. It all depends on the fabric. Sometimes a ball point needle works better for very delicate fabrics, because it doesn’t catch the threads, it just slips between them. It’s worth your time to take a couple test stitches (without thread) to see which will work for your project.

After a few anchoring stitches and a well hidden knot, I’m rolling the hem back into place.

Mimic the appearance of the original stitches as best you can. But remember, nobody is ever going to be so close that they can tell you did it differently. To finish the repair, make a well hidden knot or two, then bury the thread tail inside the hem and clip it off.

Here’s a peek at a different version of a rolled hem, what I’ve always called a whipped hem. This is a 1921 copy of The New Dressmaker put out by The Butterick Publishing Company. It includes a section on mending and darning, which I’ll share with you when I get a nice day to photograph the pages (I don’t want to smoosh it in my scanner, the spine is a bit delicate).

Mending

During the month of February, I’m going to try to mend my way through all the ripped and torn, frayed, button-less, broken-zippered, and just plain falling apart items we have. I know I’ve been putting it off. It’s not because I don’t like to do it that the mending basket is overflowing; it’s because I like to sit down with a hot cup of tea, take my time, and do things right. Mending is one of the simplest ways you can stretch your family dollar. The cost to repair an item is usually only a few cents, and the time you spend stitching is an opportunity to travel back in time. You might be surprised at the memories a simple piece of cloth can evoke.

I hope you’ll join me with your own mending basket by your side over the next few weeks as I do my best to make things do.

Day 1:

The Manly-Man brought me his sweat pants today to see if I could fix them. These are the sweats he has to wear for PT (physical training) at work most mornings, and they’ve seen many miles. I’ve repaired one of the ankles before, but it was so long ago that I didn’t even remember until I saw the blue thread in the seam. (Fixing Erik’s work stuff is usually a good opportunity for me to use up odd bits of bobbin thread. Nobody is going to see it, and Erik certainly doesn’t care, as long as it’s not visible from the outside.) These tears are probably from trying to quickly pull the sweats on over size 13 running shoes. It just doesn’t work, honey! I zipped this up quickly on the machine, using an over-edge stitch.

The next repair is a little tricky. It’s a hole that has started to run on the back of the sweats. The hole is about 1/2" wide, and the run is about 2 1/2" long. I’ll do this one by hand. I happen to have some slightly brighter green jersey (aka single knit, or teeshirt fabric) in my stash that I originally got for $1/yard. I’ll only need a tiny scrap for this.

I held the jersey "patch" in place and prick stitched around the edge of the hole. A prick stitch is a bit like a back stitch, but the stitch on the visible side of the fabric is very short, only a thread or two long at most, so it is fairly unnoticeable. In the photo above, I’ve already stitched down the right side of the hole, and I bet you can’t see the stitches.

After stitching the patch in place, I trimmed around leaving about 1/2" allowance.

Jersey doesn’t fray, but in the interest of making this laundry and Marine proof, I folded under the edge of the patch and whip stitched it to the pants. There’s no need to stitch all the way through the fabric, a couple fuzzy loops are enough to keep things in place and still look neat on the outside.

I’ve whip stitched all around the patch, and secured my thread ends with a knot.

Next I’ll stitch through the loops of the run, to make sure the run won’t "run" any further. I’m not sure you can see it here, but this run is comprised of three rows. The top row runs from the hole, to the end of the run. The middle row goes from the hole to just a little past the mid point of the run, and the bottom row is only about 1/4 the total length of the damage. At the farthest right point of each of these rows of running stitches, I’ll take a stitch right through the loops where the fabric is still good. This stitch has to be in the same row as the running stitches in order to check the run.

I’ve stitched the patch to the pants. Now it’s time to stitch the hole to the patch. I don’t want anything to catch on the hole and make it bigger, so I’m whip stitching it to the patch all the way around. This will hopefully keep dirt and filth from accumulating in the space between pants and patch.

And there you have it. A fairly invisible, but quite secure patch. I know the green is a little bright, but I think it will tone down after a few washings. If it’s still noticeably different in a week or two, I’ll try coloring it a little with a permanent marker. That ought to do the trick.

Life in the Corps, Mending, Sewing