Creative Ventures & Artistic Experiences
How I managed to wear this dress so frequently without ever noticing the back was just full of tiny holes is beyond me. This particular dress was one hell of a task, it has over 30 darns (sofar!), as well as a patch on the hem, and new topstitching around the neck. This dress has nearly 30 hours of mending in it.
We’re at the #mendmarch halfway-ish point, oh boy. Today is day 15, Saggy – something I can prevent with this mend, haha. One thing I love about mending is being in a thrift store and not being turned away by something I like or need requiring mending. Today I spotted a guilty pleasure of mine, the stretchy kind of jeans that definitely do not last. I never buy them new, I just can’t bring myself to do it, but for $2.50 I picked up a pair with a broken belt loop and went to work.
This is an easy mend, and one I’d put on my “must-learn” list for anyone who wears jeans (hell, I almost never wear jeans but here I am using the skill!) I trimmed away all the fraying edges and put a piece of scrap denim on the inside of the pants, backstitching all the way around with…whatever thread happened to be sitting in my needle at the time – today it was gold.
Then, wishing desperately that I owned a thimble, I stitched the belt loop back onto the reinforced hole. All in all it was a quick mend that will probably outlast the cheap original stitching on all the other belt loops.
Still hacking away at #mendmarch and today is Bends, well, there’s nothing more vital to my bending than my leggings, yep, leggings. They’re one of the few articles of clothing I still buy new (however, if I find a pair on the cheap in a thrift store I always bring them home), I wear them constantly as my back pain doesn’t always allow for the pressure from waistbands on jeans. But has anyone else noticed that each size of leggings goes from “fitting a bit snug and popping but then the thighs” to “baggy as all get out if you go a size up“? My go-to mend for leggings when they first start to wear through is to just fold the seam over and stitch it down to hide the hole, but that’s a very temporary fix. So with these, I took a new, fun approach.
If you’re following me on Facebook or Instagram, you saw on day 10, Defeated – I opted not to mend the patterned leggings that left me with a whole buttcheek hanging out on my shopping day. Those leggings became the perfect patch material for the black ones I wear every day. I affixed the patch with a zig-zag stitch, as it’s got plenty of natural stretch. I learned through trial and error that if I stitched both on and off the patch, like I do with other types of patches, it just ripped the already worn thin leggings more, which is why you can see so much hanging edge. But to my surprise, it did hold up in the wash!
Contrary Expressions 