Mend it Monday

Mrs Snail of The Snail of Happiness runs a regular feature called ‘Mend-it-Monday’. Mrs. Snail is the queen of mending and has all sorts of tips, ideas and gadgets to help her on her mission to use and re-use things as long she can.

She is a constant inspiration to me and is even in the early stages of opening a shop to store all sorts of pre-loved items and tools for mending and re-purposing.

I saw this exhibit at Harrogate and thought it would fit right in on this Mend-it-Monday.

It was laid out on the floor, each detail fascinating.

Mending as art – love it!

Sofa Repair

My son and daughter-in-law have a cute sofa, but the seams had come apart on the seat

It was going to cost a small fortune to have it recovered and they couldn’t find anyone to repair it ……… Granny to the rescue!

I already had some bias binding, so I bound the frayed edges.

And brought them together with stitching

The bigger split could not be pulled together, so I sewed in a layer of fabric underneath the hole.

I went over the L-shaped repair with another layer of binding to reinforce, and then sewed on patches of new material with hem stitch done with a curved needle.

I gave each patch an iron to finish off. Not the most professional job, but it was very satisfying to know I have given the sofa a new lease of life.

And I have saved the left over bits of spotty fabric should any more holes appear.

The best bit was when Little Bro (7) thanked me so much for mending their sofa.

🙂

Favourite

dusty blue

Teddy’s favourite

keeps her warm

~

Miss E very sweetly asked me if I could mend the first dress I had made for Teddy as it is her FAVOURITE. 

Of course I could not resist this Boro-esque challenge.

First I needed to darn the holes and stabilise the edge with a running stitch

Then I carefully washed the dress and took it to Miss E for further instructions.

She asked for a daisy to cover the darn in the front and for me to neaten the edge. I hope she approves of the result as seen in the first photo.

~

“Work is love made visible”

Kahlil Gibran

~

Joining in with Ronovan’s weekly Haiku Challenge, prompt words: COLOUR and WARMTH

and

My entry for our One-a-Week Photo Challenge: FAVOURITE

Please leave a link to your FAVOURITE photo in the comments to be included in the monthly round-up.

Awkward

My son-in-law caught his new duck-down filled jacket on a barbed wire fence and asked if I could mend it. An AWKWARD thing to mend.

But mothers-in-law come in useful at times. First I did a herringbone stitch to keep the edges stable. I got a piece of bias binding folded and sewed it into a right-angle and then hem stitched it onto the jacket, being careful not to go through to the lining beneath.

I was pretty pleased with the result – and so was my son-in-law!

This is my entry for our ‘One-a-Week’ Photo Challenge, which goes live each Tuesday.

All the weeks’ prompts are listed below so you can be looking out for the subjects. I like to get a few sitting in my drafts, as life can suddenly get busy at times.

Have you found anything AWKWARD recently – or maybe you have an AWKWARD photo in your archive. Cathy of Nanacathy and I created the list for fun, Rainbow Jane created the graphics for us – feel free to add any prose or poetry if the prompt inspires and leave a link in the comments below. It is always inspiring to see the variety of responses each prompt brings forth.

Next week’s subject is

GATE.