Mending

 I have had a pile of mending on my sewing machine for a while, four tops with those annoying holes that are caused by rubbing against jeans hardware - studs and zip. Although I like jeans, I have moved to wearing bamboo pull-on trousers in summer and merino ones in Winter, for reasons of both comfort and avoidance of those holes.  

This week I tackled the pile of damaged tops - and a couple of merino trousers which had developed ladders in the interlock fabric.

One of the tops was a fairly damaged cheap t-shirt, machine-embroidered around the neckline. I decided to use the embroidery for patching and the rest of it as rags. A piece of the t-shirt embroidery worked quite well on the blue wool top.               

I had two commercial patches I had bought from Jumbly-Oomph, Deeds not words and I Dissent. They are designed as iron-ons for sturdier cloth than these tops, but I thought it worth trying, stitching them on by machine rather than ironing. 

I used cotton tape to stitch over the small runs in the merino trousers, both on the inside and the outside. Hopefully it will hold. 

It remains to be seen how long these last and whether it was worth the effort. For now, it keeps a few garments out of landfill - and off my sewing machine!

First Beautiful Botanical Embroidery Bag-from-Jeans

I have lost 22 kg over the last 9 months. Mostly I am wearing the same clothes, in some cases modified. One pair of 3/4 length jeans reached a point where they fell down, and a belt didn't work well. I considered giving them to a charity, but decided I'd rather recycle them another way. 

I cut the legs off as tubes and then the body part along the side seams. Folding the back in half along the back seam will give me a bag with pockets, using the waist band as the bag top. The front is then cut into strips to form handles.

I am going to use adaptations of some of the motifs from this book on all three bags. For the first bag, I'm using a version of the design on the front cover.

Once I was sure I couldn't trace on to this weight of cloth, I tried a couple of different pens, settling in the end for an archive one. I drew them by hand, enlarging them to fit the shape I had. 

I chose my hoop size to fit the large motif on the bottom corner, and assembled a bundle of threads I thought might work.   

       

I used a  variegated perle 5 thread for the large bloom. I love the opportunity to use acquired specialty threads in projects like this. It used the whole skein.

Here is the finished side. I considered whether to leave the other side plain, but settled on a spray of leaves and blooms, still from the Botanical Embroidery book, in white on the other side. 

I'm using a No 3 Twilley's Stalite cotton, which gives a good coverage and texture.

It took three moves of the hoop and a few touch ups on the edges to finish. The denim has stretch in it which seemed to help in maintaining tension.

A single strap was enough and I lined it with some spotted cotton from my stash. It required a join - but no hassle (believe it or not, it has been ironed, though not with my steam iron. Never was much of an ironer!)

Here's the finished product, back and front. I am delighted with the result and am looking forward to making the next one - this time a night scene with owl.