Patching and mending three garments - this is what I learned
I have previously been a little afraid of mending clothes. Mainly thinking that it is difficult to make it look nice, but it has also felt less fun to mend clothes that are torn than to sew new nice clothes to wear. But, now with everything related to inflation, interest rates and electricity having increased so much in price in combination with parental leave, it felt more important to learn to take care of the clothes you have. In addition, the environment also benefits from us learning to mend what has broken rather than buying new. So now I have decided to try to learn about different mending techniques.
This post will therefore be a little different from previous tutorials. I have selected three different garments from my family's wardrobes that are broken in different ways and I will then try to fix them to the best of my ability. I will also write what I learned from each project and how I could improve the result until next time - so that you who want to don't have to repeat my mistakes.
For me, mending has mostly been a way of fixing what is broken. I had an idea that when you mend a garment, you can do it in two ways; buy mending patches and iron them on or try to mend the garment so that it is not visible that it has been broken. Now that I have read up on this, I have realized how many mending techniques there are, but of course there are still two categories that they are divided into; namely decorative mending and less visible mending. So with this post I have only scratched the surface of the mending techniques that are out there. The garments I will tackle in this blog post are a t-shirt that is sewn from some extremely thin fabric and actually of terrible quality if I may say so myself. One of my absolute favorite shirts that has a hole in the elbow and a pair of jeans that the husband has worn out in the crotch.
Men's t-shirt with wash holes
These holes were the ones that had appeared on the t-shirt in the wash. The material of the t-shirt is quite thin and that was one of the aspects that made it possible to use it despite the holes that actually appeared in the first wash. This type of hole is one of the most common holes that we find in our clothes. The two largest holes have increased in size significantly compared to what they were originally and are over 1 cm wide.
I started by choosing a suitable thread. In this case, I didn't have any pink thread at home so I ended up using a sand-colored thread. Not exactly optimal, but it had to do. I threaded the needle and turned the garment inside out.
I chose to start with the largest holes. When I had read about this technique, I understood that people generally mend according to the direction of the thread, but since the holes were elongated in the other direction, I thought that mending in the other direction should be less visible anyway, so I went for it. I had read before that you should start mending outside the hole, but I quickly discovered that this thin t-shirt in particular needed a very good margin so that the fabric wouldn't rip even more. I started by securing the thread by sewing a couple of times in place before I started mending the hole.
I started by sewing from one side of the hole to the other, trying to fold the edges up so that the hole wouldn't be as visible on the right side later. I noticed pretty quickly that the first few stitches were more visible on the right side so I folded the hole back pretty quickly afterwards so it was less visible. I continued sewing like that until the entire hole was sewn back up.
I then secured the thread again by sewing a couple of times in the same spot and then I finished by pulling the needle through under some of the stitches before cutting the thread.
I mended the other holes in the opposite direction, i.e. according to the thread direction. Otherwise, I applied exactly the same technique, folded the hole and sewed it closed from one side to the other.
When all the holes were sewn, I pressed the repairs using a steam iron and then finished with a pressing block to get both more durable stitches and also to make the holes less visible.
When the repaired holes in the t-shirt were finished pressing, it looked like this, which I felt made a big difference.
The shirt with holes on the elbow
The next item to be repaired is my favorite sweater. It's an oversized model and I bought the sweater in my late teens, so a little over 10 years ago. This sweater is so loved and well-used that the fabric on one elbow has worn down to a sizeable hole. And since this hole is so large and yet well-placed on the elbow, I chose to make a visible repair, think of it as an elbow reinforcement.
I started by rummaging through my stash box for a fabric that could be used for my elbow reinforcement. Since I knew there was no fabric in a similar color to the rest of the shirt, I looked for black stash pieces that would contrast with the shirt. So I chose a piece of jersey fabric that I had lying around.
Now that the fabric was chosen, I cut the hole clean of fabric that was tearing so that the hole was as even as possible.
Then I moved on to the part that felt the most difficult so far, namely drawing out a piece of paper in the appropriate size and shape for an elbow reinforcement. I don't have similar details on other shirts at home so I couldn't directly base my work on anything beforehand either. So I then tried pinning the paper in place and trying it on the shirt before I moved on. In this case, I felt it was a bit too small, but I decided that I could still use the pattern part but add an extra large seam allowance so I chose to move on.
Since I felt that the patch was the smallest size, I cut with a seam allowance of about 2 cm all around the paper. I had thought that 1 cm seam allowance would be just right for the elbow reinforcement itself. Since I wanted the elbow reinforcement to be perceived more as a decorative detail and less as a repair, I therefore chose to cut out two pieces even though it is only one elbow that has broken so far.
Then it got a little tricky. I first tried gluing the edges of the seam allowance to keep it in place, but since the patch is round, the elbow reinforcement itself became very angular, so I changed my strategy. So I decided to sew a gather thread by hand around the entire reinforcement instead. I just sewed the gather thread by sewing up, down, up, down with long stitches.
Then I finished by pressing everything one more time with an iron to keep the seam allowance in place.
Then again to a point that scared me a little. The placement of the elbow reinforcement. I started by pinning it in place with two needles, tried the shirt again so that the placement both obscured the hole by a margin but also that the reinforcement actually ended up on the elbow. When I was happy with the placement, I glued the patch in place using a glue pen. Then I also pinned around the entire patch as I was still afraid that it would slide around too much. 
To make the placement of the second elbow as similar to the first as possible, I measured from the cuff of the shirt to the edge of the elbow reinforcement but also from the sleeve seam to the elbow reinforcement. Then I glued and pinned it in place.
I then set the needle to the right as far as it would go on my sewing machine. Then I sewed a straight stitch along the edge around the entire reinforcement patch. It was quite messy and I was a little afraid of accidentally sewing into the sleeve, but it actually went without a hitch. 
When both elbow reinforcements were sewn, I thought it would be a good idea to reinforce the hole itself so that it doesn't get bigger. So I sewed by hand on the wrong side. I was careful to only sew in the fleece so that the stitches themselves wouldn't be visible on the outside of the reinforcement afterwards.
When the entire hole was reinforced, I was satisfied with the repair.Ripped jeans
Last up was a pair of jeans that my husband really loved. He has a hard time finding jeans that fit his body well, so when he does find a pair, he usually buys more than one and basically wears them until they're torn. But since in this case it was a pretty small hole for ripped jeans, I decided to give it a try to fix them.
I started by trying to find a jeans patch in the storage box that was roughly the right color. The color of the patch was a slightly different shade, but since it was still dark blue just like the jeans, I thought it was close enough to work.
Then the challenge was finding the right color of thread. I didn't really want to drag a pair of big jeans to the fabric store to choose the right shade of thread, but then I found a tip that there are basically three shades you should always have at home as most jeans fit one of these; Güttermann 64, 112 & 537. Since I knew that these pants were relatively light, I decided to buy the two lighter threads. 537 is very dark.
I read several posts about which thread is preferable, is it a slightly too light thread? A bit too dark thread? All sources said differently. Someone said that you should usually always choose a slightly darker thread, another said that you should choose a lighter one as it is often slightly lighter where the pants are worn. In this case, however, I thought that it was not particularly light where it was worn and 112 was extremely close to the right color for the jeans, so I chose to go with the darker of the two in the end.
I opened the pants on the wrong side. Cut the patch down a bit so it wasn't too big for the hole. Then I sewed a tight zigzag stitch around the patch to prevent it from getting scratched.
I glued the entire piece of paper with the glue pen and...
...then attached the patch to the inside of the pants over the hole. When I then turned the pants right side out over the hole, it looked like this. It just felt like a good start.
Then I sewed the patch with a tight zigzag stitch all the way around the hole. Once I had done that, I changed the stitch to a loose zigzag stitch and sewed in different directions over the holes so that the hole was sewn all over. Then I changed to a straight stitch and sewed there in different directions too so that the patch would be less visible. This was quite time-consuming and used a lot of thread.
When I had sewn these parts, the finished result was as follows.
So what did I learn and what can I do better?
Generally speaking, there is probably a lot of knowledge that previous generations have had about repairing clothes that has been lost. Maybe we have had it too good for too long so that it has not become a knowledge that is worth the time it takes. The lessons I took with me from the small repairs that I did are as follows.
- Repairing takes time, especially if you want it to look reasonably neat. So don't repair garments when you're on the go and stressed.
- Don't let the holes get too big before you patch them. If the holes get big, it will also be harder to patch them in a neat way. The smaller the hole, the less visible you can make the patch.
- Generally speaking, the holes I repaired with the grain direction turned out better than the ones I repaired in the opposite direction. However, I don't know if the large holes would have been better repaired with the grain direction because they were so oblong. Perhaps a patch behind would have been more appropriate.
- To press the holes with steam and The press block made the repairs much less visible so it was well worth taking the extra time it took to do it.
- When mending jeans, it is important to use a needle intended for that material.
- It was much easier to mend the jeans than I thought it would be, even though it takes an incredible amount of time and thread.
- When I sewed the patch onto the jeans, I had read that you should use a tight zigzag stitch, but I probably could have used a slightly less tight zigzag stitch than I did, as the patch would have been even less visible.
- When I sewed with a straight stitch, I initially sewed in the same direction as the hole. I should have started by sewing a straight stitch in a different direction and finished with the direction that the rest of the jeans' structure was, because then the repair would have probably been a little less visible.
- The glue stick wasn't quite optimal for gluing on team patches/reinforcements. I've read that there are regular glue sticks that are water-soluble, so next time I'll get one of those to glue on the team patches instead.
- Practice makes perfect. Don't give up if it doesn't turn out perfectly the first time. Next time will probably be even better.
