Mending An Old Favorite
That’s me on the far right. This is one of my favorite dresses that I’ve made for many reasons--it is made from one of the first bolts of fabric I received when I opened Stitch Lab, it is a print that reminds me of childhood, I wore it to the very first QuiltCon, which was magical, and I wore it in this wonderful picture of all the gorgeous and talented Stitch Lab Gals, which makes me grin ear to ear every time I look at it!
BUT, this dress has been out of rotation for almost a year because of a rip. I was running back to the stock room at the Lab and caught the pocket on the door knob. RIIIIIIIIIIIIP! Ugh, the most awful sound! So, nearly a year later, when I spied it on top of my mending pile, I grabbed it and headed over to the Lab.
Back in my theatre costume days, I repaired tears like this constantly. This is a quick-and-dirty method, but it is really strong, fairly inconspicuous, and last and lasts.
You can’t just zig-zag the torn edges together and expect it to hold. The repair needs to happen over some supporting fabric. We’re going to make our own iron-on patch for this. You may have seen iron-on patches at the chain store for jeans, but that is wayyyy too stiff and bulky. We’re making our own so that it supports the repair, but won’t affect the drape of the fabric.
Materials needed: iron & ironing board, a small piece of fabric that matches your garment closely in color and weight, LITE Steam-A-Seam fusible web, sewing machine and matching thread.
1. Lay your mending fabric on the ironing board. Cut a piece of the Steam-A-Seam fusible webbing and lay it web side down/paper backing side up on the mending fabric. Cover the whole thing with a piece of muslin or white scrap fabric. With the iron set on “cotton”, iron the webbing to the fabric, holding it down about 10 seconds. Let it cool.
2. Cut out your patch--cut a piece of the fused fabric (leave paper backing on) that is about 1.5″ wider and 1.5″ taller than your tear. Peel off the paper backing and your patch is ready to adhere to the garment!
TIP: if you’re having trouble removing the paper backing, you can score the paper with a pin and tear it from the center.
3. Fusible web will heat up and become liquid before it cools, so you don’t want that on your ironing board or iron. Protect your ironing board with a piece of muslin or scrap white cloth. Next, lay your garment, wrong side up, on the muslin so that the tear is flat and the torn edges are brought together, but not overlapping. Now, center the patch over the tear and cover with another piece of muslin. Hold the iron down over the patch for about 10-15 seconds until adhered.
Here’s what it looks like from the front side after the patch has been ironed on:
4. Let’s head over to the sewing machine!
a. Pop the satin-stitch foot on your machine. It has a hollowed out groove on the underside that will glide easily over the “hump” created by the stitching we’re about to do.
b. Set the machine to that zig-zag stitch that stitches between each zig and zag instead of just swinging left to right. I can’t remember the name of it but it looks like #09 on my machine.
c. Set the stitch length to about 1 or 1.5, and the width to the widest width possible. We want a dense, wide stitch.
5. Starting about 3/8″ before the start of your tear, stitch down the center of the tear. End about 3/8″ past the end of the tear. Now stitch to the right and left of this center row, overlapping slightly to blend. Continue out another row if needed. You’ll want the repair to cover about 3/8″ above and below the tear.
BAM! We’re done. Again, this is a quick and dirty, but in this case it runs right along the top edge of the pocket and is barely visible unless you’re super up close, which HEY! back OFF, BUSTER!
I could have swapped out thread colors for all the different stripes, but for me, life is truly too short for that!
Afterthought: When you wash/dry this garment after the repair, sometimes the edges of the patch will release from the garment. If this bugs you, cut out your patch with pinking shears instead of regular scissors, to keep the edges from fraying in the wash. But, don’t worry if the edges of the patch come up in the washer and dryer–it won’t affect the repair and the stitches will hold firm.
I hope this inspires you to mend a few old favorites in your own stash. Please share your repairs with us at [email protected] so we can share them and inspire more stitchers!
xo
Leslie