I know mending is boring, but it's way more boring to my neighbors and to random people I approach in the grocery store than it is to the people who read my blog. (Tip: You can scroll past my mending adventures and skip ahead to the pretty quilt at the end if you want to -- I will never even know!)
I had a ridiculously fun time reacquainting myself with some of the features of my Bernina B 790+ sewing machine yesterday while saving two of my favorite pairs of shorts, and I had to tell SOMEBODY about it. I picked YOU! Do you see signs of mending in the photo below? No, you don't, because it turned out perfect!
Left Tushie Pocket of My Favorite Shorts, After Repair |
These are my favorite shorts because they have an elastic drawstring in the waist so I can cinch it in just enough to avoid Back Waistband Gaposis that plagues me so much in ready to wear clothing, but also because they are made of a very lightweight and breathable fabric that doesn't get all hot and sticky in the muggy Florida summer like most of my other shorts. They came from REI several years ago and I bought three pairs of the same style, the khaki ones pictured here as well as a light gray pair and a dusty blue green color. I've been wearing them a lot more since I moved to Florida in February, and the buttons on the left back pocket ripped right through the fabric on the blue pair and the khaki pair. How do you reattach a button when there's a hole through the shorts fabric in the place the button needs to be sewn?
Mending Program 22 Stitched in Aurifil 50/2 Cotton Mako Thread |
I needed to darn the hole and reinforce the area around the hole before reattaching the button, so I grabbed some Steam A Seam 2 double-stick fusible web from my appliqué supplies, fused it to the back of this pink scrap of tightly woven cotton batik fabric and cut out a circle about the size of a quarter, and fused it to the wrong side of the pocket, carefully coaxing the loose threads surrounding the tear back into place to fill the hole on the right side.