I hit a patch of ice the other morning in this infernally never-ending winter and went down hard on the road, tearing an L-shaped flap into both my knee and my favourite thick denim jeans.
Once I finished sulking and wrapping up the hole in my skin (no stitches, thankfully) I realized that I’d been presented with an excellent opportunity to try visible mending on my torn jeans. You can see all the steps here, or scroll down for a video overview.
As I flipped through various pins and links I have collected on visible mending, I realized I was faced with a smorgasbord of choices. A peekaboo patch under the tear? Seam up and then camouflage the tear with colourful floss and embroidery? Boro-inspired patches in many colours? I pulled out some scrap fabric swatches and settled on the idea of shaped patches on top of the tear, but then more decisions: which shapes? I was initially leaning toward three intersecting and overlapping circles, maybe even a version of the triple moons that are in my logo. I liked the fabric I had chosen but none of the circle sketches were motivating me. Oh, I thought, what about stars?
I pulled out some cookie cutters I use for needle felting and stencil tracing. (I have so many cookie cutters to use in crafting that have never had contact with actual cookie dough!) I even traced some star shapes on a piece of leftover cardboard out of the recycle bin to try some layouts before I started cutting the fabric, but none of them were appealing. Finally I decided on one star big enough to cover the tear in the bright teal.
The next set of decisions (so! many! choices!) was whether to just cut the fabric and leave the edges raw to fray naturally a bit (my usual method of choice) or to try needle-turn appliqué or to dig out some fusible webbing from my tickle trunk of craft supplies. Thinking of durability and the stress that would be on the patch on the knee of my favourite jeans, I went with the tried-and-tested method of fusible webbing. I ironed a square of fusible webbing onto the wrong side of the teal fabric and then used one of the cookie cutters to trace a star shape onto the paper backing. Then, as I do every single damn time that I use fusible webbing, promptly forgot to peel the backing off the other side and was perplexed why my star was not adhering to the denim. We got there, eventually.
With the patch now ironed on to the denim, I had one last set of decisions to make – how to embellish the patch with stitches or embroidery. I thought about following the star shape with expanding lines of stars, and even started drawing out some star lines, but I wasn’t confident in the design. A few years ago, I embellished my favourite jean jacket with embroidery, including a bit of fake boro-inspired patching on one arm with a few lines of rainbow-floss sashiko-style running stitch holding the patches in place. I really love how it came out, so I figured why mess with a good thing? (That one was also infused with star shapes. Apparently I have a few favourite themes!)
It worked!
I’m quite pleased with how the visible mending turned out – the star patch feels strong and durable, especially with the extra lines of stitching to reinforce it, and it has just the right amount of colour.
I’m still working on my content creation skills, but I pulled together this video for a quick overview of the process:
I’ve been thinking about embellishing one of my pairs of jeans with various embroidered emblems for ages. Now that I was forced into it to rescue these beloved jeans from the trash heap, my head is full of ideas and inspiration on how to keep going. What ELSE can I do to make these favourite jeans so much better than they were to start?