#adventmending — Public Fediverse posts

The final tally for my Advent mending is: three dresses, three jerseys, three pieces of nightwear, two skirts, two undergarments, two pairs of socks, a pair of slippers, two masks, a shirt, a fan, and a saucer.
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The last mend of Advent: darning the toes & heels of a pair of socks.
I normally try to avoid non-biodegradable fibres in my clothing, but these 100% wool socks need a LOT of darning for the amount of wear they get. Next time they wear a hole they might start a new life as mulch.
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Today's mend was possibly the hardest (which is probably why I left it to second-to-last). Hardest because I wasn't really sure how to tackle the problem: elastic worn out *and* waistband worn through.

In the end I unpicked the waistband "hem" and cut off the damaged portion, then did a new double-fold hem to make a new casing for new elastic.

I also made the rookie mistake of sewing all the way around - at 12 stitches to the inch! - instead of leaving a gap for threading, so I had to unpick a bit. On the plus side, this gave me the chance to fix the bit I messed up.
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Today's mend: eight darns in a cabled cotton dress.
I decided to depart from my usual unobtrusive policy and darned the holes with a variegated sock yarn.
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Today's mend: rewiring a couple of reusable masks.
This entailed stripping the outer insulation (white) off some copper wires (red and black) and adding binding channels to the masks.
The wires are removable for laundering, unlike the aluminium nose strips (which also snap in half after about four months.)
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Today's mend: a small patch on a skirt, made somewhat more fiddly by being on the waistband.
By dint of careful stitching, I *think* I have kept the waistband-with-patch and the elastic separate. Time will tell.
Not having any matching fabric, I used the best I could find: a darkish stripe from the remains of a seersucker tablecloth (the rest of which I'd made into cushion covers). Harmonizes a bit better IRL.
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Today's mend is a bit different: no needles, instead glue.
Superglue for the saucer (previously a two-piece) and wood glue for the fan.
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Today's mend is a significant one.

Twenty years ago my grandmother gave me a guernsey she'd knitted for me - a grass/apple green, despite what the camera says.

Seven years ago I darned the cuffs where they were wearing through (https://deborah.makarios.nz/blog/2016/10/21/those-darned-sleeves/).

Today I picked up stitches around the bottom of the sleeve and unravelled the cuff, before reknitting it with the salvageable yarn (admittedly not to the same standard).

Gran's been gone for eighteen years, but her work lives on.
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Today's mend: replacing the worn-out elastic in the waist of this skirt.
But PLOT TWIST! it turns out that there were *three* parallel bands of aged elastic, of which I had previously replaced the middle one.
So this time I removed all three, unpicked the three channels in which they had run, sewed a line of stitching to make two channels, and put in two bands of (wider) elastic.
Definitely one of the more complicated elastic replacements I've done!
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Today's mend: two more or less matching patches on the back shoulder seams of an old dress (only one shown here). The patches are made from homemade bias binding.

If I've counted right, these are patches four & five for this dress. (That's part of patch three you can see in the corner of the photo.)
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Today's mend: a three-cornered tear in the sleeve of a thin cotton shirt.
I used hemming tape on the wrong side and a sort of quilted darning on the right side. A bit of a cicatrice, but it does the job.

I don't know how old the iron-on hemming tape is, but it dates back to the days when you could get 4m for $1.18 (NZ). Still works!
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Today's mend: darning a hole in the sole of these knitted slippers.
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Today's mend: darning a pair of bedsocks. They are pure wool (i.e. no nylon, like sock wool has) so darning has been a big part of their lifespan.
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Today's mend: a simple replacement of old perished elastic with new in the waist of a pair of shorts.
Considering how brief a time it took, it is embarrassing to think how long these have been languishing in the mending basket.
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Today's mend: similar to the nightie, this slip/petticoat had damage around the slit in the back hem. A bit untidier on the other side, what with the darn, backstitching etc, but it should hold, which is the main thing.
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Today's mend is incomplete. I thought these shalwar just needed the crotch seam finished, but it turns out two full length seams also needed to be finished. All trimmed and pinned, but the long seams aren't sewn yet.
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Today's mend is incomplete. I thought these shalwar just needed the crotch seam finished, but it turns out two full length seams also needed to be finished. All trimmed and pinned, but the long seams aren't sewn yet.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending #SecondHandShops

Today's mend. I was planning to donate this t-shirt nightie, then discovered it wasn't quite in donatable condition - not only an unintended extension in the side slit, but little tears in the fabric on both sides of the seam as well.
This is the outer, presentable side. The inside looks a bit like Dr Frankenstein started a side hustle in manufacturing ladies' nightwear.
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Today's mend: a teeny tiny hole in the sleeve of a jersey. I'd suspect moths, but from what I hear, one hole in a houseful of woollies isn't the moth M.O.
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For my #AdventMending I have six darnings, four stitchings, three patchings, two elastic waistband replacements, and one each for buttons, glue, reknit, and "recreate".

Today I did one of the darns. Two mends down, 17 to go!
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