#clothing repair

[reality-detective]

Life Hack: Clothing Repair 🤔

[i-like-rocks22]

Tried my hand at some visible mending this weekend. Behold my terrible and adorable daisys! I love them!

[cozypunkprints]

Finally got around to finishing this visible mending project from this fall.

[spidercityy]

i fixed my first wrist cruff that was literally falling apart because i refuse to throw it away 😇

i just dont know if i should put the studs back on or not 😭😭😭

heres how it was before

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Visible Mending

My grandmother sews up the elbows of my shirt.

Patched and patterned, in garish colours

Outlandishly clear. A kind of cloth kintsugi, saying

This is not that which was here before.

Ostentatiously altered, openly repaired,

A virtue signal, I accept, but will not apologise for.

I walk the streets with solarpunk written on my arms.

Andrew sews up the flaps of my skin.

Carefully sutured, his steady hands

Bear a duty of care. These marks will scar and harden,

Swallow stitches and leave stretch-pleats.

Even when the scabs have fallen,

I stand with a form all fixed and modified,

A body I stayed with, laboured over,

Though I could have chosen to throw it out.

I stand before the mirror with trans written on my chest.

Lined and changed, my biohacked body

And rescued clothes speak prophecy to a future

As yet unnamed. I carry them both as a promise.

One on the other, endlessly whispering,

Visibly mended and always the proof

That redemption is worth the price.

I rub oil into my scars and ask

My grandmother to teach me how to sew.

[genderchrisisspeaks]

Got to thinking about how mending our own clothing/textiles isn't something that's widely taught/encouraged now while I was sewing my blanket back together. Made me remember a lot of people I know don't even know how it is done. Do you know how to sew?

[ironcowboyphantom]

Fav Socks - more darn than sock

Socks: 7 ish years old? Worn at least 1/2 weeks in work shoes, doc martens and winter boots. Origin, i believe bamboo with a BIT of rayon (unsure).

Learned from these: wool darning-weight yarn (yellow, dark blue, burgundy) holds up well over the long term. Can be combined with cotton (red, light blue and pink) for larger holes for good results (ex. heel of 3rd pic is cotton interwoven with wool, as is ball of foot in second pic). Surprisingly cheap acrylic dollar store wool seems to hold up well too, provided is tightly woven.

Thicker cotton (yarn and doily-weight) does not hold up well over the long term and tends to make the areas where it is used "crunchy" and stiff/brittle. Embroidery floss when close woven using 3 or 4 threads actually seems to hold up ok, but takes much longer to complete the repair.

[improbable-implosions]

Another multi-parter for both thighs across the main seam of a pair of jeans! This is a VERY common canvas for sashiko 'round this household, seeing as both Razz and I have pretty thorough thighs. Luckily, having learned my lesson (somewhat) from the giant patches in the same area I did previously, I split this into two designs, even if the patch fabric itself was one piece. Both designs are from wrenbirdart's stick and stitch collections, barring that little section on the first one I pencilled myself, as the main pattern was slightly too small.

First up we've got this genuinely delightful set of little asterisks, formed out of vertical, horizontal, and two diagonal sets of stitches. The first set of stitches immediately make clear that I really should be more careful about my math when I'm trying to duplicate the wrenbirdarts patterns onto my own dissolvable backing. Sure, that set all the way on the right is off by increasing increments of a quarter inch with each set, but I actually don't mind that look too badly in the end. The general look of all the eight-pointed overlapping crosses works super well, and I may take some inspiration from the mildly-fumbled pattern on that hand-pencilled section to make an alternating pattern of standard crosses and the asterisks, in the future.

Secondly, there's this pine forest design! I really had a love hate relationship with this one, as the pattern itself is SUPER pretty, I mean, look at that final picture! It's so beautiful! The major downside, though, is that it doesn't lend a lot of opportunities to load up straight stitches in a row. As you can kinda see in the progress shots, you do that central "coordinate grid" of a given pine top, then go quarter by quarter, filling in the other stitches, one by one, individually. Which, to me, is SUPER boring, I much prefer to load up a bunch of straight stitches in a row, then pull them all through, smoothing the fabric afterwards. So, partially because I wanted to get it done and over with as fast as possible, and partially because my jean shorts were in DIRE need of fast repairs before I could wear them in the (then incoming) summer heat, I somewhat sped my way through the pattern, in hopes that I can later come back to this pattern, and develop a more-loadable version that still keeps the pine-like beauty of the finished piece here.

[charlisabeth]

The elbow on this cardigan wore out, so I decided to fix it with some flowers 🌸

[offmyfuxkingmind]

I cast the spell: hole be gone

[reality-detective]

Lifehacks / Useful Tips 🤔

[calendae-creations]

I finally got around to mending this pair of pants! I know the other side is going to need reinforcement before too long as well, but they're currently wearable, which is what matters

I didn't draw out a grid or anything for the sashiko stitching. I definitely was going for fast over tidy! Still, I like how it looks.

[cozypunkprints]

A collection of most of the hand-darned mending I’ve done in the past year or so.

[strawberrysalamanders]

Crochet Patching

from Mending Life: a Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts by Nina and Sonya Montenegro

[th28th]

Your favorite pants will button again someday if you just believe.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Some visible mending I got done on old clothes at the repair cafe this weekend!