@Lorrrraaaaine totally understand about the YouTube.

My sewing machine died this year so I’m all set to learn my new one and get caught up on alterations and mending. I found a baby hashtag for #adventmending which I’m going to pursue next year. I spend so much time gardening it’s good to have a focus month. This year, however, we fix until the basket is cleared! πŸ˜ƒ

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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending
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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending

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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending

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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending
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.)
#Advent #mending #AdventMending #masks
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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending
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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending #glue #superglue

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.
#Advent #mending #AdventMending #knitting #memories

Those Darned Sleeves

Remember that scene in Cool Runnings when they arrive in Calgary and Sanka rushes back into the terminal to put on everything in his bag, followed by the bag? Thirteen years ago, that would have be…

Deborah Makarios
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!
#Advent #mending #AdventMending