Today was a pretty relaxed day. As I’m writing this, I can’t remember what I did most of the day, which probably means I didn’t do much.
However, I did mend a pair of pants I’d brought! I brought only two pairs of jeans, and realized in Malaysia that they had formed holes at the upper inner corners of the back pockets!
I’ve been wanting to learn visible mending recently (a technique for mending clothes where the mend is visible and is designed to look neat), so the day before I’d grabbed some sewing supplies at Daiso (a 100 yen store).
I ended up deciding to use a technique where a thick thread (or sometimes yarn) is used to make a weave over the hole in the fabric. First, I had to rip up the corners of the pockets, since the holes formed right at the place where the pocket corner meets the base fabric of the pants. There was no good way to rip up the stitches, so I resorted to using a kitchen knife. It was slow, but worked!
Once done with the weave, I re-stitched the corner of the pocket back up, then began ripping up the other pocket.
At this point, one of my guesthouse-friends wanted to go to a local cafe, so I went along, and we brought our sewing projects (they’re crocheting coasters for the guest house) and drank lattes (mine a hazelnut latte, theirs a creme brulee latte) while we worked.
Somehow, the second weave turned out worse than the first (I struggled quite a bit with the first couple rows – I was pulling the needle through a loop the wrong way which resulted in a less defined weave pattern and was messing me up).
Still, I’m pretty happy with the results! I may try something more adventurous for the future mends, since these are really just woven patches of another color. Some people weave flower designs, or go for full-blown embroidery. I didn’t have the confidence for that this time, maybe next time!
As it turns out, these jeans will need more mending soon – there’s a hole quickly forming in the crotch area, and smaller holes beginning to form in the other two pocket corners, with signs of imminent holes at the belt loops… Oh well – at least I know how to do it now!
And yep, that’s basically all I did! I think I also took a nap somewhere in there …
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