Mending with Patches

All fabrics start to wear after a while. Most can be easily repaired and embellished at the same time! Patching is a practical, creative and fun way to mend a hole, cover the stain, or just up-cycle.

These are the instructions included with our Mending Kit (available from THE SHOP). You could recreate the kit contents from items that you alrady have, and use this article as a guide to getting started. If you wish to purchase one of our kits as a gift for a friend, or for yourself, please follow the menu to our shop and we will be delighted to send one to you.

Inside the box you will find:

• 1 piece of denim

• 7 pieces of co-ordinating fabric in various sizes

• Embroidery floss in co-ordinating colours

• Needles

You will also need:

• An item of clothing to mend

• Fabric scissors

• Embroidery snips or scissors

• Safety pins / sewing pins

• Tacking thread

Useful information

Your kit contains two skeins of six-strand embroidery floss which can be split to provide any combination of strands for stitching.  For embroidery, it is customary to use two strands, but for mending the choice is yours. The only constraint is that the thicker the thread, the harder you may find it to pull the needle through the two layers of fabric, so you may find it easier to stick to three or four strands.  Alternatively, you could invest in some needle-pullers to help get the needle through the fabric.

When cutting thread for sewing, try to cut a length no longer than the distance from your elbow to fingertip.  Anything longer and you will find it starts to knot and tangle, which can be terribly frustrating.

When patching a garment, think about how the area you are mending functions.  You may prefer to add a patch of stretchy fabric over a knee or elbow to make it easier to bend, while a mend higher or lower on the garment might be better with a less mobile fabric.

Don’t immediately throw away your fabric offcuts or thread snippings.  Larger pieces of fabric can be used to make boro or kantha style patches while small pieces and threads can be used for stuffing toys/pincushions etc.  By saving your snippings, you’re keeping them out of landfill and preventing dyes from leeching into the ground water.

All the fabrics, threads and embellishments for our kits have been rescued from local charity shops and the Gloucestershire Resource Centre and Scrapstore (http://www.grcltd.org/scrapstore.html).  Nothing has been bought new.  All fabrics have been laundered in an unscented, non-bio washing liquid and pressed.

How to mend an item of clothing

Consider the item you want to mend and think about the different things you could do to it.  The type of fabric and nature of the damage will affect the mending method you choose. A small blemish (hole, stain etc) could be sewn up, darned over or patched, while a larger area of damage will most likely require patching, with or without some decorative stitching.  Knitted items are great to darn, while a pair of jeans will need some robust patching

.

Have a look at some of our other blog posts which will help you patch your jeans and darn your jumper:

Making a darn to mend your clothes: https://www.theyarngenie.com/post/patching-with-a-darn

Making a patch: https://www.theyarngenie.com/post/patches-for-mending

Using patches to mend clothing: https://www.theyarngenie.com/post/using-patches-to-upgrade-your-jeans-leggings