Got this hoodie at the thrift store that I really liked, except the strings were the most garbage strings I'd ever seen in my life. Probably why it was donated, since its basically brand new and otherwise really nice. So last night I made an icord to replace it.
It's just some mercerized cotton from my stash. I tried lots of grays but none of them were an exact match, so I decided to go for something colorful instead. I'm glad I did, I think it looks nice. It's about 5 feet long. Probably could have gotten away with 4 and still had a good length, but 5 is nice. Never would have guessed that's how long these things are though.
Anyway, I then tied the new icord to the old garbage string so I could pull the old string and have the new one thread itself through. So easy !
No. For some reason it was sewed down right at the middle. I mean, I understand the function (keeps them the same length and they won't accidentally get pulled out), but I have never seen this before and I was very annoyed. On a hoodie with a nice icord ? Awesome. But this icord literally looks like a piece of trash you'd find on the side of the road.
Anyway, it was sewn down with the exact same color thread in multiple places, so I just had to cut it out before I could proceed.
This morning I neatened it up. Originally I was doing a buttonhole stitch around it, but then realized I didn't know what I'd do after that to make it look OK, so I pulled that out and just darned it. Usually when you darn something you're able to put an object under it to stabilize things... in this case it was a doubled layer of fabric and no way to put anything between them and still be able to take it out later, so I just did it freehand with nothing to tension it. That's why it's kind of wonky. Worth it tho, I avoided sewing the layers together accidentally and that's what I was afraid of.
It's not bad. It kind of looks like a label (I've seen labels placed there on hoodies before so I don't think it'll look too weird). And from far away you can't see how untidy the darning is.
I did want to take a couple in progress photos so you could see how tangled and horrible it looked initially with just the warp threads in, but my cat was asleep on my phone.
This is as much of the patch as will be seen while wearing it.
Here's the design on the front. Outline is the state of Montana (USA) which i have never been to and have no real opinions about, but I liked the pattern inside, and it fits very well and is soft. Happy with the work I put in, I think it's much nicer now. And the icords are great to fiddle with.
Yay for making slightly garbage clothes much nicer by hand !
