Sustainable mend and maintain-along ♻️

I think it’s fascinating how you can just knit the holes/worn parts so seamlessly. Is it hard to do?

It’s a bit fiddly, but it depends on how much of the fabric is missing and on how the yarn behaves. I’m basically threading/sewing a new length of yarn the same way the old yarn went before breaking. It helps to practice duplicate stitchimg before something breaks.

I made a tutorial:

For the sock with the pink mend I used the same general idea as my second example. I used smooth cotton yarn to have something that could hold the stitches while I remade them. If you don’t pay attention to what way the yarn should go through the loops the new ”stitches” will be twisted.

I had some issues but decided to just go over once more and duplicate stitch over the wonky ones. Hopefully it will not be too wonky to walk on.

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Oh, great with the tutorial! Will look at it when I mend my brother’s socks!

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I have gotten a good mending start this year. Besties blanket is whole again. And three pair of panties (underwear) is fixed and good to go!

But I took a look in my small pile of kitchen towels/tea towels, and I do wonder why I have kept one of them. Aside from belonging to my grandma, its just a towel. And it is more broken than whole, so Im not sure I can mend it in a good way. But maybe I have to give it a try.

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Can you make it into something else? slow stitch? boro style?

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Yes of course! That is good ideas! Didnt even think about that, even though I like the boro style very much!

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I hope the fact that you’ve kept it and used it for a long time, and that it reminds you of your grandma, will make it into something you really enjoy stitching :slightly_smiling_face:

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Mr. Imma is at a party tonight, but I didn’t join him because I feel a bit meh. I also did laundry while putting it away afterwards, I found items of clothing that need some minor mending. On top of what’s already in my mending basket - there’s actually a pile next to the mending basket already.

So I suppose instead of partying, I’m going to try and get that pile a bit reduced tonight!

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Sounds like a good plan! I’m going to take a look at my piles of mending today. I should be able to mend or get rid of at least one item.

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I didn’t get around to fixing everything, but I put three items of clothing back in the cupboard and two bath towels, so that’s a good score for one evening when you’re not feeling 100%. I don’t think many people still fix bath towels, but both were really simple:the hems had come loose. So I hemmed them again and now they can get back into use. While I had my machine threaded up in the right colour I also sewed two simple zipper pouches that I had already cut out a few weeks ago.

These were most of the simple fixes, I also need to hand stitch some skirt hems that came loose, and I need to repair a lot of socks, but I put these off.

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You’re doing better than me for sure! Old towels tend to go into animal duty here, but if it’s a quick fix like a hem that’s a great mend. Even a quickie mend can prolong the useable time of an object,

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We don’t have animals, so old towels are used for two purposes: the ones that have a hole in one place but are otherwise still nice, are repurposed into face cloths or hand towels, the ones that just worn out are used for cleaning rags. Old towels are the best for cleaning up spills because they’re so absorbent.

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I need to go through our towels…I am pretty sure my husband just put the ones that might need simple hemming back into the linen closet.

I tend to donate towels to the animal shelter where they have volunteers that cut them into sizes needed to clean or care for the animals.

Hope you are feeling better!

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Just over a year ago, I was mulling over my options for mending our towels in ways that wouldn’t look too mended when I realized that our youngest towels were over 10 years old and that it was OK for me get new towels. AND because there were still a lot of life in them even if they looked a little bit ratty around the edges and I could donate them to the local animal shelter which would get every bit of life out of them.

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I sorted out a milk crate of “these towels are ok to wipe up staining things with” after the second or third time someone decided to pull out a fairly new light colored towel for mud or paint.

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My favorite sweater had an ugly hole on the chest:


Thankfully I was able to fix it right after I saw it

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What hole? Wow…I can see why it is a favorite…love the colors and patterns, and so worth saving!

It was the 2nd hole I found in this sweater in the last month. Now I’m terribly afraid that I have moths somewhere.

I’m pretty good about setting things aside to mend, but not good about mending them. Ahem. However, this was quick and didn’t require much in the way of aesthetic considerations. Until we have a pretty solid idea of how big Vivienne will get, we’re using this old, not-very-“real” harness that we had from when our Betty was a pup. It the top layer of fabric was coming away from the binding, so I gave it a quick ziggity-zag to help reinforce it so we can hopefully get through a few more months.

HarnessMend01

This seems to be the only shot of I have of her wearing it. Not sure why she was wearing it in the house a month ago, but I suppose it is when I dug it out and wanted her to get used to wearing it.

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I recycle all our dog stuff since they go through so many sizes when growing.