#sproutleboople

[improbable-implosions]

Another few hastier mends here, this time for small holes that cropped up on some jorts that I needed wearable! Originally threw these on here so I could get them up and working for wearing on camera scanning microfiche :)

On that note, let's start with the thematic mend for this batch, a little internet archive logo! Split the black floss to roughly match the thickness of the sashiko thread I tend to use for white in embroidery situations, and stuck the drawn-on dissolvable backing to the whip stitched hole. (Was going to take my chances just wetting that little section to get the backing out, and it turned out to work just fine :3)

It was actually a bit of a process to get that design onto the backing, couldn't find an archive logo at the right scale as is, and had to do some nonsense with zooming an image and screenshotting at the same time to get it at the right size!

Finished up the white stitching, and got a few rows of black stitching in before I remembered to take a picture! This one was just satin stitches, so it shaped up quite quickly. I could have perhaps placed several of those that form the pillars a little more precisely, but it still reads quite well, in my humble opinion! (Hey, gives me room to maybe add some horizontal white stitching to fill the gap and imply the column shape a little more strongly)

Next up is another additive mend, the little void with eyes didn't quite hold off the ravages of the hole beneath it, and with the direction it spread, I thought a little woven picot was in order, to keep the fabric from eroding further. I landed on a wizard hat for the little goober, maybe I had final fantasy's black mage on the brain, maybe I just wanted a little more magic in my day, who knows!

Either way, the texture of the picot stitching here really did great at sort of implying the curve of a traditionally conical wizard hat! Especially so when contrasted against the flat-on brim being outlaid by some simple satin stitching. The little wizard will make another appearance eventually, here, he's gonna get a few little icicle spells to cover the hole expanding in another direction (and, honestly, I'll be resisting the urge to tack on a piece of patch fabric beneath the little guy) (maybe I should look up a starry sashiko pattern just in case that turns out to be necessary!)

[improbable-implosions]

This jorts mend wound up happening because I didn't quite do that triforce at the top of the tear correctly, turns out that the whip stitching of the hole is quite important to keep the problem from continuing to spread!

(yes, I did go back and double check the stream VOD to make sure that's what was up)

First up, we stitch the patch onto the area that needs fixing. Ordinarily, I would hem the patch separate to these stitches, but this tear appeared VERY suddenly, at a time I needed fixed shorts more than I needed Proper Procedure followed! Luckily, doing it this way at least encourages me to nail the placement of these stitches, so it can both look great and last longer.

Again, haste here dictates a change of approach, rather than dealing with the dissolvable backing that needs a) to be set up all nice to have a readable, followable grid, and b) to go fully through a wash cycle on already clean jorts, we're going for a little simpler grid of water soluble marker instead. (In my own testing washable markers Have Worked As Well, but this needed to come out with just a rinse)

Even despite my haste, I think I really like how the vertical stitches came together here! Admittedly, this pattern responds very very well to the grid you're stitching based on not being exactly perfectly square, so that's bound to help, but still, good stuff so far :)

Next up is the horizontal stitches, in two batches, even. (Hence why the picture there is only half done) As I recall, it came together this way on account of starting from the same thread that did the vertical stitches, as is tradition, but running out halfway through. (Listen, I'm sure there's some clever way to splice two threads together, but I didn't know it then and don't know it now) (Even then it's likely to be harder than just starting a second thread up anyway)

Last but not least is the whip stitching we saw up top! It probably would be best to whip stitch the whole hole, really, to make sure it's All Staying Put, but I ran out of thread about that amount in, and that should at a minimum keep the hole from expanding any further along the line it wants to expand on, while the triforce dutifully keeps it from expanding any higher.

I actually really like how this came together, despite being a bit of a rush job. Plus it's in a much more visible spot than my usual mends, (those tend to hide, being on the insides of thighs) so I get to show off!

[improbable-implosions]

Time for another traditional embroidery mend! This time, we're trying out the Puncetto Valsesiano stitch, which, after I finished this up, I've found, is an entire style of needlelace! For this patch, though, we just did stitch after stitch after stitch, no fancy patterning. (I might do fancy patterning later, to be fair! been reading up on things, and I've got a few smaller repairs to make that would suit it quite nicely!)

One row of stitches in, and I was thinking, oh this can't be so bad! this is actually quite soothing, all these repetitive actions, and with such a delightful, knitting-like texture!

This many stitches in, and sure, I'm still having a good time, but mostly, I'm finding out how much thread this takes! Poor razz, @razzmatazic, I thought this was going to be a simple, small patch, so I borrowed her thread to work on this one! You can't quite tell in this shot, but I'm actually about to run out of thread!

After likely much, much more fuss than was strictly necessary, including accidentally picking a slightly different color of floss because of some mislabeled strands, noticing I'd dropped enough stitches to need to throw some extra ceylon stitching in a gap, and a probably pretty noticable shift in texture because of single vs. double threading, we've got ourselves a patch that, even despite its shortcomings, I really dig the look of!

Unfortunately, I didn't make this patch wide enough generally, so I've got a few more holes that'll be getting filled by a big 'ol sashiko patch that's going to layer overtop the puncetto, eventually! Stay tuned, I'm just as curious as you are as to how that'll look.

[improbable-implosions]

This particular mend turned out to be MUCH more complex, involved, and fussy than I really ever expected it to be at the outset. That said, after all the work where I focused on taking my time to get things just so, I found out that I'm quite capable of handling larger projects like this!

First up, here, before starting, my partner Razz and I sat down, and went through our clothes with a careful eye. More and more of her pants in particular were in need of little fixes here and there, and I figured rather than going about it all piecemeal and in no particular order, not accomplishing the fixing of clothes she needs, we put them together into an order of "most wanted fixes" to "least pressing fixes".

Once I had all that info, I settled in with a measuring tape, and got to identifying all the mends that needed to happen. For every piece that was more than, say, a few inches of rip, or of a shape that standard embroidery wouldn't cut it for a fix, I cut out a piece of patch fabric, with the intention of making use of these patches by doing sashiko mends.

Step 1: pin the hem of the patch down, initially hoping to run it through the sewing machine to have a nice hem! Sure, it was kinda fussy doing the quarter inch hems, since I hadn't really done this before, but it's not _too_ bad in hindsight!

Step 2: Realize that the sewing machine foot you have on hand got mixed up with a family member's in a move, and begrudgingly realize you have to re-pin the hemmed patch directly to the jeans being mended. Grumble, grumble! Oh well, at least this light blue thread is going to be really cute on the jeans, so there's that.

Step 3: stitch down the patch to the fabric, blissfully unaware that this big of a patch which interacts with the main seams four times like this is going to be a huge pain later!

Step 4: with some clever use of tape and bumping the laptop brightness, make a tracing of the segaihana pattern onto the dissolvable backing. (I did realize later, mind you, that I could have just used something small and circular to draw this manually, but the tracing worked out just fine, so we take those!)

Step 5: get stitching, following the pattern on the backing! I get about this far before two things happen: first off, the sewing machine foot returned from family-home purgatory, and secondly, I realize that pushing this needle over and over with my bare hands is REALLY wearing out not only the muscles in my hands, but also thoroughly frustrating my skin, in the process.

So, as a little test of the sewing machine, I made this little palm thimble! the loop of thread on the left there loops around my middle finger, and then the denim takes the brunt of pushing the needle, instead of my poor fingies!

So, over the course of a few days, with a LOT of help from the palm thimble (some pieces even getting done on stream, go check out the vods: https://youtu.be/oeytUetT2Z0 and https://youtu.be/u6k-Yr4Vjn0) we get the first (major) panel done! Might not be super visible in these shots, but there is in fact a second piece to be stitched here!

So, after yet more tracing (which took a good bit more fuss, since I had to align it with the previous panel!) we find ourselves at step 6: do the second batch of stitching! Overall, I actually really enjoyed the way this piece came together, the segaihana pattern is super pretty to look at. Plus, I learned a LOT in doing this one, the big thing being, if you're going to have trouble on both sides of a thigh of a pair of jeans, even if the damage is spread evenly on either side, break the patches up along the main seam. Sewing through the many layers of that denim is particularly taxing, especially when I'm struggling to nail the positioning of the stitches to carry on a nice pattern!

[improbable-implosions]

Okay, so brace yourselves gang, this one's a bit long as it's actually secretly 3 mends! First up, we've got some simple sashiko crosses with some nice contrasting bee-themed yellow fabric! You might not be able to tell by the way I've got that grid laid out partially in the progress shot there, but originally the idea was to have this one follow a pattern I'd found from someone on youtube that had a sort of 3 dimensional look to it, but I miscounted some stitches, and so had to stick with crosses instead.

As we can see here, it's pretty blatantly cleaner with the grid to use as reference! sure, my stitch length isn't exactly the same every time, but to be honest with you? I could probably only nail that with the stick and stitch patterns, they're at least roughly correct!

Unfortunately, I also mis-placed the fabric slightly in the process of that patch, so that leads me to the other two mends here! Coming off decorating that mask, I had a good bit of remaining embroidery thread in bi colors. Found a tutorial for the ceylon stitch, liked the way it came together, and since it's really great at squares, decided I could use another little bi flag, much closer to properly proportioned this time!

Last but not least here, we've got a flag for demisexuality, which, honestly? a piece of my identity I don't bring up much! I figured, though, in for a penny with the pride mends, in for a pound, and honestly, the little chevron wasn't even all that hard, I just adapted a crochet pattern for the stitch count. (Really, the hard bit was the purple stripe in the middle, as I had to chain all those single stitches together with only the black triangle as an anchor!)

I absolutely love the way this particular mend came together, even if it was mostly a recovery from fumbles. I swear, these jorts are cursed, they only got this sashiko patch because the normal denim patch I put on them previously wasn't the right size, either! Plus, after I wore them a bit more, the other side of the seam wore out, too, so I've still gotta apply a patch there, but hey, it's more wears than I would have gotten out of them normally anyway!

[improbable-implosions]

Remember how I said the puncetto valsesiano didn't quite hit the spot just right for the mends I needed? Here's how I fixed it!

First up, we throw some stitches down to apply the patch fabric! I tend to keep my edge stitching, as I kinda enjoy the framing effect it applies to patterns, so I'm a bit more careful about the spacing of the straight stitches I use. Usually, I just see people kinda toss some tack stitches down they remove, and honestly, there's value to that too, make it so there's _just_ the pattern, y'know?

First up, over the puncetto, is the horizontal stitching. I'm using a pattern from wrenbirdarts, and It's intended that you do some weaving after the end of this pattern, but I wound up liking the look of it with just the stitching.

The pattern is really coming together with the vertical stitching here! That, and it's really coming across how well stitching through the puncetto is working out! If that didn't use so much thread for so little space, I might keep this particular order of techniques around! (Perhaps I'll have to use it for those ceylon stitched patches, eventually?)

Last but not least for the puncetto area, we've got the two diagonal sets of stitches! You're meant to weave between the small crosses in the "offset" area between the crosses with diagonals, but honestly, I looked at the way that finished piece looked, and didn't care for it. There's another woven pattern I've seen around that makes a sort of hexagon grid that I might take a shot at on another piece, though!

Next up, for the opposite side of the seam from the puncetto, I decided I wanted to make my own pattern based on a stitched example online! The idea of this is meant to evoke woven reeds in a basket, but I also thought it gave a sort of tetris-esque pattern. With some simple math (and a lot of help from a ruler!) I put down these lines Just So on the dissolvable backing.

Horizontal and vertical sets of stitches later, we've got a completed basketweave sashiko! This wound up being a really entertaining pattern to do, especially at this relatively small scale, because I could breeze through each line in, practically, one pass each!

Slightly unfortunately, the pattern doesn't really read at this small of a scale, so maybe I need to keep the basketweave pattern to be used on larger patches, instead. It's a real shame, because it's such a fun pattern conceptually! Oh well, guess I enjoyed the process more than the finished product this time :)

Last but not least, busted out the speed loom to do a little darn to cover a hole that expanded past its patch, ever so rudely (i actually misplaced the patch, like with the pride flag mends) (doesn't make the hole any less rude though) (especially since I didn't whip stitch the hole to hold still so I had to add this block of ceylon stitching after two or three wears to block the still expanding hole from further friction)

[improbable-implosions]

A little mend here that I was pleasantly surprised worked, I fixed the fraying bits on my book-shaped wallet! Figured that red thread works quite well with the themes of War of the Worlds.

First up, we've got some simple stitches perpendicular to the edge of the wallet, think a blanket stitch but the thread doesn't run through the loop created. Honestly, there are probably more complex ways I could have stitched that vinyl "leather" back onto the fabric and cardboard of the book structure, but I figured these simple stitches would be faster, and work just fine.

Second, on a slightly larger tear on the "spine" corner, I did some randa stitching! This actually draws from a style of embroidery I'm almost completely unfamiliar with, most popular in Brazil, so I may be labeling it wrong. If you know better, let me know! It's a sort of baseball-stitching like process, I was roughly following this video as a tutorial: https://vm.vxtiktok.com/t/ZT8TNMKw9/

and also this one to understand how to get started: https://vm.vxtiktok.com/t/ZT8TNrMML/ (Excuse the tiktok links, but I am not immune to the allure of short video on occasion! I even have posts of my own, every now and again)

I actually need to do similar rim-lining on the other three corners, as the adhesive is starting to come off, and that'll hold it still enough to solve the problem.

Also, some miscellaneous adventures in hemming patches properly! A process that proved MUCH simpler once I found my rolled hem foot. These two patches came out quite good, actually! straight stitching, for the most part, and relatively even folds.

It was much simpler to get the hems just so on a larger patch like this one, thankfully! I'm actually really pleased with the way this one in particular came out, and hopefully, I can make something pretty with it on the thigh of the jeans it goes with. (yes, that's why the patches are numbered, so I can keep track of where they go in the stack!)

Even despite how well things went overall with the patches, I still fumbled, got a bit hasty in trying to get the corner of one of the later patches through the machine. Said haste had me trying to shove shove, cram cram the fabric through the foot to get it hemmed, turns out, don't do that! Results in bending the needle on my machine! Oof!

Luckily, the machine came with some spare needles, so it only slowed me down a little bit!

[improbable-implosions]

These two visible mends are a bit different from the others, in that I did them (well, 99% of them) on stream! We spent a good volume of time working on that triforce, which was made out of a woven picot stitch, using some dyed-yellow sashiko thread. Near the end of the stream, however, we noticed that the corner of the other pocket also needed some repair, and added a few black stitches to make a little void patch.

After the stream, I decided the little guy needed eyes, so I threw two silver french knots on the top of the affair. Personally, it reminds me of the grue, from Zork, just two eyes flashing in the dark, but I've gotten several people mentioning the soot sprites, which, admittedly? I can see!

https://youtu.be/gLOhWEJrpeo?si=fjAfOlNdICsHMM4X want to hang out while I work on this? Like I said, I did it on stream, here's the VOD!