Mend and maintain for a sustainable 2020

Here is what I did last night. My son had a tiny four hole … hole … in his nice pair of jeans. He said he wanted a triangle with a dot in the center and picked out the thread. Originally I was going to put a little patch of fabric over it, but it became so fiddly that I scrapped that idea and just did simple embroidery.

Here’s the before.

And here’s the after.

Oh, does anyone have ideas for repairing kids stretchy pajamas? My son was in a phase a year or so ago of cutting his pajamas. I still make him wear them since they still fit, he just has to be careful putting his feet in the pants.

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Nice!

As for pj’s… I’m looking at a few pair myself here and my instinct is if they are all the same weight/material to maybe take the piece in the worst condition and cut it into patches for the others? Someone else should weigh in on this as I’m completely new to the mending and sewing arts.

As for me, I’ve moved the basket to the front porch and separated the mending needs into piles for “seams” and “holes” so that I might actually make a dent in them. We’ll see!

Edit to add: i managed to mend a sweater, a table runner, a t-shirt and the seam on some pj pants (which also need holes mended). Not bad for a naptime craft sesh!

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I’d try to fix them in the way @AntBee suggested. I fix holes in my cotton thights and hiking socks that way, by cutting a square out of a similar stretchy fabric (an old pair of thights) and sewing that over the hole on the back. I don’t repair the hole on the front because the fabric doesn’t fray and that way you don’t feel the patch while wearing it. I hand sewed these but I would zigzag them on the machine if you need to do a lot of them.

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Thank you! There’s one pair that has a lot of holes, so I could cut that up and use it to repair the others.

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Exciting pic, right? We took this door off when we moved into this house in 2007. We signed closing papers, drove to the house, and demolished a very ugly and large closet that had been added to the room. Think 1970’s do it yourself with plywood. We removed the door and added to the stack of other doors that had been removed and stored before we moved in. Somewhere in the next 13 years, I had given away the doors.
Now we needed a door on this room as it is my craft room and is not overnight cat compatible. He likes to play, climb, demolish things as entertainment at night. We tried a cheap acordian door as a stop-gap, but the cats can open/force their way in at the drop of a paw. I want a french door installed, but the budget is not ready for that. Then in the middle of the night, I remembered that we had saved that door and it was hidden behind other stuff. Yay! We installed on Saturday, it didn’t fit anymore, the house had settled over the last 13 years, but power tools took care of that. And the strike plate had be moved…allong with it’s 6 layers of paint. I scrapped the paint off, chisled at the door and yay, the door worked.
I have to do some repair and paint the door, it’s the wrong shade of white, but my crafts are now safe. And no $$ were spent.

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Great salvage! Especially when no bucks were spent.

I still want my french door though. sigh. someday.

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Nice save! That door looks like it needs a crafty mural :wink:

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It’s a catticade!
One of my fondest kitty memories is of my orange cat streaking out of my craft room with a purloined purple feather boa trailing behind him.

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This was posted in another thread.

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I re-used plastic sleeves that come with trader joe’s cards for my Halloween Shakey Cards. No need to go out and buy plastic.

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I saw that and laughed so hard milk came out of my nose. And I wasn’t even drinking milk!

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I did some mending today when visiting my mom. Her cotton cardigan had a couple holes and she wanted help saving it. I gave a couple tips on how to go about it.

Then we raided moms box of embroidery kits/leftovers and I found suitable colors… so I ended up doing it there and then.

Happy, mended sweater.

I used a mug to get a smooth working surface.

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Good mend because I totally would rock that sweater, too!

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Well done! Love the cardigan too.

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Nice mending job!! Love the sweater!

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I wear a lot of recycled sari skirts so every once in a while, the silk gets a tiny hole or tears just from wearing. I must have caught this one on a nail or something because it was a rather large hole. I tried just mending it with thread but the silk was too thin. So instead, I put a matching patch on it. The little blue embroidery was to cover up a tinier hole.

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That’s a good solution to the problem! Matches the blue stripes too!

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It’s beautiful! It looks like it’s always been there.

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I haven’t been doing anything but cross stitch for a while, but today I pulled out the sewing machine and attacked the mending pile. Fixed the denim quilt again and reattached the elastic on some pairs of underwear, again. Not very interesting but it needed to be done. At least I got behind the machine again.

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