There is a box, in the corner of my sewing
room. It is a box whose contents have not
seen the
light of day for many a month. Many crafters
will be familiar with this box,
in all of its forms: There’s the ever-growing
amorphous lump
that lies underneath your desk… The monster
underneath your bed…
The stuff you vacuum-packed in a fit of organization
and stuffed into your garage in the hopes
that you’d never have to deal with it again…
This, my friends, is the UNFINISHED SEWING
PILE.
The item that I’m pulling out of the style
pile box today is – oh man, look at this.
Why isn’t this box getting any emptier!!
I have to stop adding stuff to it!
Anyway, I thrifted this incredible sweater
for about $1 the other week – LOOK AT THE
SLEEVES – but unfortunately it also had
a bunch of holes in it, which is probably
why it was at the thrift shop in the first
place.
So, today I’m going to show you how to mend
holes in knitted fabrics like this one.
Now, what I’m going to need is thread in
a colour that matches the clothes I want to
fix, a needle, and something kinda small and
round to lay the item over – like a water
bottle. This is like, the proper thing that
you’re meant to use, called a darning egg.
But something shaped like this bottle works
just fine.
First, I thread my needle with the thread,
double it over, and I tie a couple of knots
in the end.
Then I turn the sweater inside out, and I
lay the hole-y part of the sweater down on top of the bottle.
First thing that I’m
going to do is to hand-stitch all the way
around the hole’s edges.
I do this by working my needle up and down
through the knitted stitches that are already
there, which will help to make this mending
pretty much invisible.
Once I'd sewn all the way around the hole,
next I’m going to sew a kind of lattice
across the hole, gently pulling it closed
as I go.
So here's the first part where I’m going
across the hole, weaving my needle up and
down through the knit like this.
I pull the thread all the way through, and
then I head back in the other direction.
And I keep doing this until I’ve gone across
the hole.
The hole is definitely getting less noticeable!
To make the hole really disappear, I’m now
going to go up and down over the hole, like
this.
So, I go up,
and then I go down... working
my way over where the hole used to be!
When the hole is totally closed up, I tie
a knot in the end of the thread, and I do
this by slipping my needle underneath a thread
at the back, pulling the thread through until
there’s just a small loop left, like this,
and then I push my needle through the loop
and I pull the thread through to make a knot.
I repeated this a couple of times just to
make the knot a little bit bigger, and then
I cut off the rest of the thread.
And, the hole is closed! Flip the sweater
around to the right side, and you can hardly
even tell that there was even a hole there.
I LOVE this sweater, and it’s big ol’
70s style sleeves! I’m very excited to wear
it out and about.
By the way, would you guys be interested in
a “thrifted lookbook” of some sort? I’ve
had a bunch of amazing thrift hauls recently,
and I wouldn’t mind sharing them in the
form of an outfit video. I did a few outfit
lookbooks last year, and they’re really
fun to make! So, let me know!
Thanks for watching! I hope you all learned
something, and I’ll see you all in my next
video! Bye!
Thank you so much to all of my Patreon supporters
who help make these video possible! To become
my Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria.