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Mending - Blog Posts
Mending my favourite vintage night gown
I got this nightgown at a vintage shop a few months ago, for not an insignificant amount of money let’s be honest, and it was love at first sight. Unfortunately, I wore it for a single weeks before a nasty tear appeared in the sleeve. I already had to strengthen the neckline trim and patch the inside yoke so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but still, I was kind of pissed off since I paid kind of a lot of money for it. Anyways, here’s my repairing process in pictures:
1) The torn fabric (zoom on the picture to see just how bad it was)
2) Basting the patch. The fabric was so worn I used two patches, one inside and one outside, to securely sandwich the delicate zone and prevent future tearing.
3) I was loosely inspired by sashiko for the mending so, last night I went into a mending rampage and drew a grid before starting on the stitching proper, making up a pattern as I went on. No picture of the grid pre-stitching because it was 11pm and I had lost any sense of time and space.
4) The patched up nightgown, with the topmost buttonhole strengthened before it started spontaneously disintegrating too.
I am super happy with my pseudo-sashiko mending pattern and will really research this technique of embroidery and mending for future use!
little things that i try to do to get more out of my clothes
I finally got around darning the toe of my favourite knitted socks!
I’ve had them for six years at this point and basically live (and sleep) in these socks all winter, and they are starting to fall apart; but I will darn them until nothing of the original yarn is left and then some more! They are from some generic fast fashion brand and I’m kind of surprised by how well they hold the constant use.
The purple yarn originally served to tie together a pair of leg-warmers my mum gifted me from a super cute and knitting and sewing shop. It was the perfect length to darn the hole in the toe of my sock.
The blue darned patch is from last year, I think, and it’s some sort of poly yarn leftover I found in my mum’s box of miscellaneous sewing and knitting supplies. I just had to pull in a few threads that came loose before they broke.
Looking mournfully at the rip in the sleep of my favourite vintage nightgown as I put it in the Pile of Doom. The size of the patch to strengthen the fabric as well as the number of rows of hand stitching it requires is kind of daunting.
^” Almost Exactly One Year Ago Today I Tried To Take My Own Life. The Emts Had To Cut Off My Pants But I Decided To Keep Them And Repaired Them With Bias Tape. I Call Them My Kintsugi Jeans “
^” My Child Requested “Flames In Space” For His Knee Mend.. “
^”Every Time This Dress Gets A Stain, I Fill It In With Fabric Markers”
^ “ First Time Mending, Hope It Holds Up! “
Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky
link to PDF
https://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/sites/fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/files/ct-mmb-147.pdf
I made a side blog for my upcycling/mending/painting stuff ( and a few personal thoughts)
Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky
link to PDF
https://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/sites/fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/files/ct-mmb-147.pdf
I have a tan hoodie i got a few years ago, from my mother.
Since i got it, its been my favorite.
Its thin, and torn but its comforting. Theres holes at the end of my sleeves i can stick my thumbs through.
On a warm summer in British Columbia, me and my friends take a bus downtown. Pausing at one of the stops to smoke and a bit of hot ash falls onto my hoodie, burning a small hole. It doesnt bother me.
Painting on a wall late at night, its cold and i can barely feel my fingers against the nozzle of the can. When i bring my arm down, my sleeve brushes against the wet paint and leaves a permanent stain. It doesnt bother me.
As the hoodie grows more worn the ends of the sleeve cuffs wear out, theres a hole that bores through them from where i put out a joint. At some parts the sleeves thin out, nearing another hole if it dare gets caught on anything. It doesnt bother me.
A late September i meet my best friend through his brother, we find and break into an abandoned house that still has belongings. He decides to spray the motion lights with liquid rubber. As i walk under it, it drips onto the pocket of my hoodie. It doesnt bother me.
The inside of the hood is stained purple from me sleeping with damp hair, even if it fades every time i wash it, it never fails to reappear after a shower. It doesnt bother me.
I get knocked off my feet in a friendly fight, the back of my hoodie gets caught on a rock and tears. But my friend is standing above me holding his hand out to help me up. I sew a patch over the hole later, but he doesnt know that. He apologies with a drink. It doesnt bother me.
I no longer wear this hoodie out, for it is worn and thin and very lovingly mended. I still see it as a part of me, the memories it holds are dear to me.
All of this! I love natural materials; they last beautifully, are easy to mend on your own, and don't look dingy after 3 washes. The only real problem is you must learn how to do laundry properly rather than dump all of your clothes together into the washer with 2 tide pods and then blast them with the dryer 1-3 times. Like... A waxed cotton canvas barn coat is significantly warmer than my polyester polyfill jackets on drippy dark hikes, wool & cotton socks don't give me blisters, silk (actual silk, not nylon and elastane) stockings don't give me rashes on the backs of my thighs. Natural materials are your friends!
Idk exactly how to explain this but the softness of real wool and real linen is very different from the artificial softness of polyester “sherpa”, fuzzy faux-fur, spongey acrylic knits and people have gotten too used to the soft plastics and now associate wool with “itchy” and linen with rough and cotton with “too heavy” and then go and wear 100% polyester fleecy sweatshirts and say it’s so warm and cozy but actually they’re just staticky cooking in their sweat locked inside a plastic membrane and you are paying too much to be wearing filaments of petroleum products and the money isn’t going to the people sewing them either. I’m saying you all need to touch grass and the grass in this situation is good quality textiles made of natural fibres.
Resources for Mending Clothes
We toss out over 80 pounds of textiles each year. These textiles are often made of plastic materials (polyester, nylon), made in unethical conditions, dyed with harsh dyes that often get put into the rivers, etc. Even a single cotton shirt releases carbon emissions and uses tons of water.
So the best thing to prevent the unsustainable growth of the fashion industry is to make sure that your clothing lasts as long as possible. To do so, mending clothing is a must. So here are some resources to help you learn how to do various things, such as sewing a button, to tailoring clothes, or even upcycling old clothing into new styles.
* How to sew on three different types of button
* How to hand sew on a patch on a torn pair of jeans
* How to sew up a hole in an old shirt
* How to sew a simple T-shirt
* How to upcycle old clothing into new clothing
* More upcycle and sewing techniques
* How to repair a damaged sock
* How to do an invisible stitch
* 3 different stitches to work with for different results
* How to make a T-shirt smaller so it fits you better
* How to make repairs to your shoes
These are just a few of the things that you can do in order to make sure that your clothing lasts for a long time. Nobody wants to keep buying new clothing, as it is expensive and wasteful.
So making alterations to your clothing, or fixing small holes hen you see them can be hugely beneficial to your wallet, to garment workers, and to the environment in the long term.