Tuesday 14 April 2009

Mending Mondays: Patches


Yes, I know it's Tuesday. I started patching late last night after some other work because our usual Monday morning routine was delightfully topsy turvey due to visiting Granny, so let's get on with it, shall we?

Now, these holes look suspiciously square. As in, cut-out-with-scissors square. Hmmm.....


This one, however, seems to be yelling at me:


Probably because I promised the owner of this particular pair of pants that I'd mend them... a year ago. sigh. I suppose I should work my way through this pile and not try to compost it.

Last April I patched a couple pairs of Safiya's pants, and I learned a lesson. The hard way. Patches are great, but it would be a much better idea to actually fix the hole so that little toes don't get caught in the gaping-ness of the old jeans as they're making their way down while getting dressed. I thought that patches fix holes. They do not. They cover them.

I found this really good tutorial on how to fix holes, which I'm in the middle of trying with these cords. In the tutorial the stitching is left bare, but I'll try adding another patch on top, just to pretty it up.

As for those other little holes in Safiya's clothes, I did some basting tonight while Mr. S. read evening Winnie-the-Pooh stories aloud, so I did get some zen-like mending in anyway, which was nice :-)

night-night!

1 comment:

Matriarchy said...

Thanks for the links to mending tutorials. I have a pile of pants that recently wore out. Mine mostly wear out at the thighs, but I think I can work on that with the hole-fixing method. I hate to throw out pants that only have one (significant) hole. Most are khakis, so I can cannibalize one pair to make patches for the rest.

I also like your "lengthening long johns" tutorial. I have some pants that shrank in the wash, just enough to make them floods. Your post gave me the idea to add a ring of denim to turn them back into wearable pants.

I am even thinking about adulterating some tops that has slowly gotten shorter than I like. I am not wearing them at all now, so if it comes out weird, I didn't really lose anything.