We’re not quite halfway though #mendmarch, I’ve been eagerly awaiting this day – Make aMENDs. Well y’all, I have a confession to make – I love Rayon. I know, I know, it’s awful, and even worse, I specifically love the slickly embroidered Rayon that if you get one little snag the whole decal pulls out. I have a talk with the little angel and devil on my shoulder over Rayon regularly. The angel says, “Cece! It’s bad for the environment! It’s a pain in the ass to work with!” and the little devil says, “But it’s so soft and slinky and it reminds you of all the long gray haired hippie women with turquoise jewelry who always told you everything would be alright!”
Today, I make aMENDs with my love of Rayon, because, to be fair, I’ve never purchased it new, and I always try to mend it, which I’d say is a pretty conscious way to work with the devil of all fabrics!
For five years, my stubborn ass has been putting my favorite vest, that very specifically requests to be air dried through the same wash and dry cycles as the rest of my laundry. Why you may ask? Because I’m stubborn, lazy, and in my twenties, that’s why! But no more, I finally tackled the consequences of my actions this week.
I have a lot to say about this mend, so I popped an old favorite on to sit down and start writing to.
If the first thing you’re probably thinking seeing these two photos is, “Hey! Cece finally learned how to use something as simple as a light!” You’d be correct. I’m ashamed that it took me this long, but here we are, with much easier to see mends! Hooray!
This vest is made of two layers of fabric, preparing that top layer first involved trimming away all the little “fuzzies” that would have been so much easier to clean up if I were the kind of woman to own a razor, but simply am not. I trimmed away the frayed fabric (I’m saving all my bits and pieces now, any ideas what I can do with them?) I then tacked it down and satin stitched all the way around – that sonofabitch ain’t goin’ anywhere now! I really love the color thread with the color of the vest, it’s a visible mend I can be proud of, but still very much my style (my style tends to be “thing that look like dirt,” and I own it)
One thing I should really have learned better by now is that when you wash these things, the embroidery pops and fuzzes and they all pull straight out. Here I pulled out some frayed embroidery, tacked down the surviving end with some very aggressive couching and tried to mimic the original split stitching with this lovely dark green embroidery floss. I’m gonna have to be honest with myself though, this is probably only the beginning of me reinforcing this vests embroidery, I have not been kind to it over the years…
Next, I covered this bleach stain with…a leaf? an oval? whatever it is now, I’m sure it will become something much cooler some day. I do love using embroidery to cover stains though!
This is where I discovered just how much of a monster I truly am… I washed and dried this beautiful vest that I love so many times that the French seams failed. What a horrible accomplishment, I’m both ashamed and impressed with my ability to f#$% something up. I added a few lines of machine stitching in hopes of catching future fraying (can you tell I’m reeeeally not that good at using a sewing machine…yet?) I’ll probably have to revisit this mend, because I’m not super confident that it will hold up – but I’m surely not gonna keep washing and drying the thing like I would a practical material.
And there we have it – my favorite vest I ever destroyed, looking more lovely now than when I bought it (yeah, that’s what I’ll keep saying)
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Contrary Expressions 