#cotton mendings

[euphoniouspandemonium]

Cotton Mendings screenplay REAL

[cottonkhaleesi]

The downside of being habitually slapdash is that every now and again I need to do a little upkeep where things stretch/fray/come loose

It’s not onerous but I should start branching out from just differing shiny thread and satin stitches.

[godlovesdykes]

there’s a lovely singer handcrank at work and i wanna use ittttt but i’m moving in a week and all my blocks are packed up so i can’t make a pattern for the corset cover i wanted to make. or the top for my beach pajamas. and now that i have perfectly fitted blocks i don’t wanna use commercial patterns. so what do i use it for???? also my job ends in a month so it’s not like i can use it for very long.

[flaxenshit]

I love wool and cotton and linen clothing, I love leather bags and shoes and coats and jackets, I love brass and silver jewelry. I love how they all look and feel and function, but more than anything else I love the attention they take. The ritual to clean and condition and care for. The mending, the proofing, the polishing. I love having a relationship with my material objects.

[dreamingdragonstudios]

patching a hole on my new nightgown 4.38.2024

[jensownzoo]

Mending those pesky wear holes in the inner upper thighs of jeans: a journey.

The vast majority of us that both do not have a wide thigh gap and are moderately active while wearing jeans will encounter this type of damage tear frequently. And if, like me, you can't afford to replace your jeans every few months and find the placement of these holes a little problematic, mending them is an attractive option.

But patching such a large area - and the material is thinning and needs reinforcement no matter how small the hole is currently- on the exterior is very obvious and often unsightly, bringing potentially unwanted attention to a fairly personal area.

So!

The answer is to apply the patch to the inside and make sure both the fabric and the thread match the existing material as closely as possible.

I had accumulated an impressive number of jeans that had developed this defect (24!), some over two decades old. I first took a separate stack of jeans that either I couldn't wear anymore or had other defects not worth repairing and cut them up for patches. I ended up with four long usable panels (2 per leg, front and back). I cut one of these panels in half to use as my interior patch to cover the crotch and a length down each inner thigh.

I then pinned it in place, going down both sides of the seams first (since that area is less stretched out) and then pinning the edges down after smoothing them out.

And then I hand-basted the patch in place with some high-contast embroidery floss I had left over from various cross-stitching kits.

I tried to make it lay as smooth as possible, but as wearing the jeans tended to turn the flat fabric into concave, there were a few spots that ended up with a few wrinkles in the original material. I made sure to put them near the big seams so they're less noticeable.

And then I dragged out my sewing machine and loaded it up with the special needles for jeans (reinforced to go through tough/thick fabric) and the special cotton thread for jeans in a medium blue. Unfortunately I could only get one color of jean thread due to my cash flow situation so it will show a little on the lighter and darker jeans, but not enough to worry about.

I then sewed a simple stitch next to my basting thread. It was all straight lines with 90 degree turns. The only issue was I could only sew a few inches at a time, because I was essentially working in a bowl. Had to pause to readjust the piece and smooth out the next run. It still went really quickly.

And then I used my trusty seam ripper to remove the basting thread and viola! Here's one of the pairs with a higher contrast so you can see what it looks like on the exterior:

You honestly don't notice it when they're being worn. If you use a smaller patch (or two separate patches), you may want to do some more reinforcing stitching. By making my own patches so large, most of the stitching is outside of the friction zone so the thread won't be threatened by wear. For the stitches next to the original seams, well the seams have a higher profile and will protect them.

The one thing I will change the next time is to use pinking shears on the patches before I pin them in place to control fraying. Otherwise I've been wearing them and it's great!

[zenaidamacrouras1]

Today in pants updates did you know you can put perle cotton thread in the bobbin of your sewing machine and then sew your project upsidedown so the heavy decorative thread shows up on top?

Perle cotton is more stable and durable than embroidery thread for this purpose. Most machines can't handle a 9 wt or 12 wt thread through the top, because there are many delicate mechanisms to hold the thread tension that very large threads fuck with. BUT the bobbin thread typically only goes through one little tension spot so you can put all kinds of weird threads in the bottom. This is also nice if you want to sew with sparkly thread and your machine keeps eating it. Try the bobbin and sew upsidedown.

Looking at this you'll see the white threads overlapping the purple. My top thread was white. I could have tightened the top tension to make those go away, but did not care. Given the density of the stitching this is stable enough for my purposes. If you are using a really large or stiff bobbin thread you will not be able to make those lines go away, but that's okay cause its actually reminiscent of a traditional hand embroidery technique called couching or laid work.

So if you are like "I need to embroider a spiral on my pants right fucking now but I don't feel like hand sewing" there you are.

[charlemane]

Mixing materials for darn durability?

I like to darn wool socks with wool, but I understand that it's not the most hard-wearing material out there. Does anyone have any experience or information on whether its lifespan can be increased by weaving it in with other yarns?

To clarify, I don't mean using a blended yarn (I don't have any blended yarns), but like, using yarns of different materials together. When I first started darning wool socks, I used a cotton candlewick thread for the warp, then wool for the weft, but since then I've switched to doing wool both ways. But the socks I've darned haven't been back in circulation long enough for me to tell which method fares better in the long run.

Thinking I might use the next pair I darn as a matched study - one with cotton warp and one with wool - and that way, provided I don't lose either of them, I'll know that they're both getting the same amount of wear and tear. But that could (hopefully) take a while to pay off, so anyone who has advice now, please hit me up!

[vorobej]

the generative analysis framework of fan writing which is very much my preferred framework is so rooted in the 19c realist novel

[katiecelf]

New YouTube Short

My son, XuliGruff (please like and subscribe on YouTube) helped me make a little short video about making an EPP Hexagon. He filmed and edited it ❤️

[euphoniouspandemonium]

Cotton Mendings — a WIP intro by yours truly

finally doing a proper introduction yayy!! who would have foreseen this .

stage: drafting (rip it's been so long and it's going soo slow)

tags: #wip: cotton mendings ; #aes: cotton mendings

genres: historical fiction, literary fiction

themes and tropes: idealisation and romanticisation of people, queer love and toxic queer relationships, friends to lovers, tenderness and love for the world, hope, grief, obsession, mythological and religious imagery, breaking out of other people's perceptions of you, relearning gentleness after having it beaten out of you, being loved as being known

warnings: emotional and physical abuse, character death and mentioned animal death, period-typical homophobia & transphobia (will add on)

pov: 3rd person past tense

setting: 1920s England

summary: Oscar ignites a relationship with an old friend – charismatic socialite Salvatore – whom he has had repressed love for for years. But despite everything their relationship is haunted by the death of Oscar's brother and a series of portraits simply called Percy, made by a German artist: paintings of a red haired man who appears perfect and soft and yet incredibly, beautifully tragic. It makes Oscar question Salvatore and their relationship and wonder about the life and seemingly inherent sorrow of the subject, while Salvatore grows ever more enticed by ruthless, enigmatic Yvonne. Their separate obsessions grow and push them apart, while at the center of everything is Percy, devastatingly alive and spiteful, trapped in a narrative he did not create. Who is Percy, who is Salvatore, who is Oscar in rotation to them? Does he want to know at all?

characters, notes, excerpt & taglist under the cut <33

characters:

Oscar (he/him, bi): world's #1 most pathetic sad boy. romanticises everything to the point of self destruction. scared of acting on his desires but full of soooo much love. obsessive, incredibly sensitive, artistic, melancholy. also sooo autism.

Salvatore (he/him, bi): charismatic, intelligent, flamboyant, philosophical, hedonistic. he sees everything in a very realistic and nihilistic way. emotionally detached yet surprisingly protective and gentle with the people he loves.

Percy (he/him, bi, trans): babyboy !! baby!!!!!!!! full of so much life and love and poetry. he is very sweet and sarcastic and loves going on little adventures. mentally ill & physically disabled. he's suffered more than jesus but his wonder and whimsy are unmatched.

Yvonne (she/her, bi): hot evil woman❤️ ruthless, vicious and cold. her love is almost violent and repugnant. she only cares about few people but if they are in danger she knows no morality or law. also she's mischievous like a little cat <3

notes: Cotton Mendings is my passion project, my Magnum Opus, my baby. I have worked very hard on it and I've developed the character dynamics and symbolism sooooo much I could talk about them for hours. It all started with the song Angie by The Rolling Stones, but it has strayed very far from its original concept (actually Angie isn't even on the playlist — it is now completely a product of my obsession with The Smiths I'm afraid). It has helped me through so much and I will be very happy if people like it :] I love my horrible insane bisexuals. Why is everyone bisexual, you ask? well. I ❤️ bisexuals.

excerpt:

He thought again of Percy, of the way he glowed as if coated in honey and sunlight, the sweet smile on his face. What if Percy had spent his life failing at it, too? Trying to be the perfect picture of a beautiful boy. Turning hazy and translucent, like a ghost, from trying. And those few minutes with him, how the light extended and held Oscar too, how Percy was perfect and beautiful but couldn't possibly be only that. How they were both an image without a body.

(general) taglist: @ribelleribelle @talesofsorrowandofruin @writing-is-a-martial-art @alexwritesfiction @aether-wasteland-s @sculpture-in-a-period-drama @phantomnations @olimpias (ask to be added or removed)

[cottonkhaleesi]

More neverending darning

Got very lucky with the colour matching!

[narutomaki]

WHO... IS BUYING NEW CLOTHES.... MORE THAN ONCE A YEAR....... WHO ??????

[ahhvernin]

X-Mending Life.

[sexcromancy]

hewwo look what I just made. I've been wanting to get into plush alteration for a while. this lobotomy + surgical attachment of straps to a penguin plush I got as a gift was so fun !! he is perfectly sized to fit my lobotomy queen :) the little fish pull tag was originally attached to his flipper

[playfullygrownup]

I don't think this is an example of mending but mending-like embellishing. Or perhaps it IS mending and it's done so skillfully that you literally can't tell...! Anyway, what a great way to fix a pair of jeans. Distressed vintage boyfriend jeans from MyQueensWish on Etsy.