As I have been trying to clean, organize and declutter around here I have found a bunch of clothes that needed mended! It amazed me a little just how much there was! Mending is something I definetely consider worth doing ( I am curious how many others do much in the way of mending?). I like it for a couple of reasons: 1. We can wear something longer and not have to spend money on anything new. 2. We eliminate something else from heading to the dump.
Here are most of my finished products! Jonathan has the largest pile with 6 pairs of pants and a shirt (there was also a coat that isn't pictured and I need to do a few more pairs of pants!), I wonder what it is with 8 year old boys that make them so hard on their clothes?!
This did take me a few hours (a little bit of time here and then a little time there- I don't often have long stretches of time to work on things like this) but having all these clothes serviceable again is totally worth it.
We had a lot of worn out jeans to mend. Obviously these jeans will never look wonderful again but something we do is have "good" clothes to wear to church and other times out and about and we have "everyday" clothes to wear when we are just going to be around home or going berry picking or something like that. Even if the clothes are just going to be worn around home it is nice (and more comfortable) for them not to have big gapping holes so I do a very simple patch.
The way I do it is to simply cut out a piece of denim (from a sacrificial pair of jeans) that is bigger than the hole. I round the corners. Then I stick the piece on the inside of the jean leg, line it up and then pin it in place. Then comes the wrestling match with the pair of jeans and the sewing machine! I am thankful to have an arm on my machine but you still have to do quite a bit of manipulating to get it so there is just one layer under the foot feet at a time! But it is possible and once you get the hang of it, it doesn't take to long. The finished look is obviously not that polished but it works just fine for us for jeans to wear around home while gardening, playing, building tree forts, you know all those rough and dirty jobs. :-)
Another "mending" job was actually more covering up a stain. Mara had worn this dress to church and ended up leaning into a stamp pad in class. I tried to get the stain out and it was pretty light but I still thought it would be better to cover it up if possible.
We chose a dark green ribbon to go around the seam line and it covers up the stain pretty well. That was a very simple fix!
Do you have any favorite ways to mend or fix up clothes? I would love to hear your ideas!
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Life as MOM.
