One of My Favorites

 

Doesn't everyone have a favorite sweater, one that is so very soft and ever so cuddly warm?  This is mine. It is 100% cashmere and made by Herman Geist. I love anything Herman Geist. I don't think I own anything that is as soft and lovely feeling as this very mundane gray sweater. I have had it for quite a few years and don't want to give it up. Unfortunately it was starting to fall apart. The hip and sleeve seams were coming unsewn  and that was a very easy fix. 

The neckline, however, was in tatters in some spots and needed to be fixed somehow. I am not a knitter. I do embroider. I do have scads of woolen embroidery yarns in every color imaginable. What to do , what to do?  

I took some pieces of wool that I had hand dyed back when and made little circles to hide the tatters. I then just pretty much threaded my needle and started stitching away. It has been a long time since I have done this type of work so what you see is pretty sorry but I think it will work for now and give me some more time with my beloved sweater. 

Being big on balance but not wanting to bring too too much attention to my wide hips, I did a more subtle version of the design down on the opposite hip.  I think it works. 

While I don't expect it to bring me any prizes at the county fair,  I think Ole' Herman would approve of my changes to his rather blah but wonderful gray sweater. Even if I just wear it around the house and it makes me smile and feel warm and softness all around me, that's a good thing. Nothing better on a cold, snowy day like today..............Bunny

The Speedweave, my new toy!

 

Allow me to introduce you to my new toy: the Speedweave. I have wanted one of of these for quite some time but found them particularly expensive for what they seemed to be. I first discovered them about 3 years ago. And what on earth are they, you ask? 

This is a tool that enables you to weave small bits of weaving. It's genius is that it hooks up tightly to an article of clothing,  like a sock or sweater, and you can weave right over the hole that has made its home in that garment. Below you can see it hooked up to my husband's treasured heavy wool sweater that he has worn a hole in during 25 years of wear. Like most men, he does not want to give up a favorite garment and it has sat patiently folded in his closet for years waiting for me to fix it. I never really knew how. I don't knit and it just was beyond my skill set to make a repair that would like good. Enter the Speedweave.

Why did I wait 3 years to get this little treasure? Well, they were pricey. They smallest size was running about 69 dollars and  were made in the Ukraine. I wasn't particularly comfortable sending my credit card to the Ukraine and I thought the price was awfully high. There were purveyors in Britain selling vintage models from the UK at the same price. I just wasn't sure. Every now and then I would look up the Speedweave, same pricing, same issues. A couple of weeks ago I gave it another try. The price was down drasticly and and I bit. I could get a made in China version and a few days later it was on my doorstep. Yay! 

It wasn't impressive upon arrival. It was in a small box, loaded with English misspellings and poor grammar but I figured it out. This one cost me 13.99 instead of 69.00. It was quite easy to figure out how it worked and there were scads of videos on youtube,  listed under "Speedweave",  so there were no issues learning how to use this little wonder. 

Based on what I read in reviews I got the  14 needle version.  Many regretted starting with the big large version as they realized it was too big to get into a lot of tight spaces to reweave small holes and they wished they had purchased the 14 needle size instead.  Others purchased the 12 needle, obviously even smaller, and felt they should have gone bigger. I think the 14 needle is just right.

If you look back at my husband's sweater pic with the little loom attached you will see that the top of the weaving, the bottom of the needles,  is way above the hole.  This was my first mistake. I was later weaving over perfectly fine knitting and you really don't want to do that. I lost patience and took out the weaving early rather than go all the way to the top and that made for more fussing at the top edge to make it all look well finished. I failed on that but it's all a learning curve. So the first thing I learned is to line up your hole just below the bottom of the needles.

Other than that it went pretty well. It is quite quick. Like any loom you first warp your tiny loom and then weave your weft threads through. I used Paternayan yarn, 100% wool like the sweater, and this was the closest match I could get on this heathery knit. Hubs was pleased and thought it just perfect. When I first showed it to him he couldn't find the patch. That was all I needed. 

When all the weaving is complete, the patch is gently slipped off and the loom disconnected. You then pull the weft and warp threads neatly to the back, weave them here and there and secure.  You see the blue tape on the loom? I found the edges of the metal at the top of the loom very sharp. I covered them with painter's tape to avoid cutting myself.

You can use any sort of thread or yarn you like for your tiny weaving. You can get very creative with bright colors and patterns. You can weave over denim, sweaters, you name it, just try to match thread weights for the best results.  My goal here was to just get through my first attempt and to be as unobtrusive as possible. The camera and its flash are making it show up a bit more than it does in real life but in the end I think it looks pretty good, at least good for a sweater he puts on under his heavy hoodie to go out and blow snow when the temps are blowing in the teens. He is Very happy with his patch. He has waited years for it. 

I think this little addition to my toolbox will really come in handy. I've already found an afghan and another one of his sweaters to play with . Such fun,,,,,,,, Bunny

Is It Invisible?

 

Jeans all mended. 

I have really enjoyed being home since  retired. I am getting back in the  groove of household planning and organization and it feels good. Plenty of time for creativity is built into my schedule. Each day of the week has a focus and each week that focus can change based on needs and season. This week I pulled out the last of the winter clothing and planned a day to get it all washed and ironed as needed. Done! I planned the next day for the inevitable mending I found and a bit of more purging. I mentioned that to Hubs and he showed up as I sat on the couch  reading my latest Threads and handed me an extremely worn pair of jeans. He said, "these are my jeans for working outside and they are so comfortable. They have holes everywhere and I can't wear them anymore. Can you fix them?" You bet I can and I added it to my mending pile for the next day. 

Jeans crotch before mending. Left hole is the size of a quarter. Right hole is the size of a dime. 

The crotch on these jeans had the typical "ball burn" . It went right into the heavy seams. 

Pocket hole was about dime size and extending into the pocket corner. 

The fabric around the back pocket was just disappearing. It also needed repair and reinforcement. I found other little issues here and there but figured I would get through his requests first, judge the reaction and go further from there. These jeans are probably twenty years old. 

My mending tools. 

The way I wanted to mend the hole would require comfortable space to work on the sewing machine. That meant opening up the seams in the surrounding crotch area and removing some of the pocket. These are the tools I used to make this task easier. I will go left to right.

First is my box cutter blade. I use these a lot,  and their very sharp corner makes ripping serger and flat felled seams much easier. I simply lay the garment down on a flat surface and push that point into the well of the fold on the right side of the garment. I pick a little bit with the point and open up a few stitches. I then go right down to the second seam of the this double topstitching and break a few stitches inside the fold for that row of stitching. If I place my box cutter blade just right and keep the garment flat to the table, I usually can just slide the blade right down, in that well of the fold, and open both seams and the serging all in one pass. If not, the cutter blade will still let me make short work of slicing out the threads from this type of jeans seam.  Just be careful. This is not your Dad's single edge razor!  It did not take long at all to open up the seams. No slipped rips happened. 

You will often find areas of topstitching, like the bar tack at the end of the above topstitching, that will defy the blade and make it work too hard.  Forcing the blade to do what it doesn't want to could be dangerous, soooooo, I have another tool for that. It would be my pink tool, second from the left. This little number has been a great help in the sewing room since I found it at Rite Aid. It is an eyebrow shaver. Really. I saw them on sale. They come four to a pack, small money and are brilliant for shaving out threads that are stubborn and don't want to be removed by cutting or blades. You simply shave those little bar tacks a few times and boom!--the threads fall apart and you pick them out with  your tweezers or awl, third and fourth from the right.  Next in line are my Kai tiny curved scissors. They are so pointy they are dangerous. They are great to sneak into the fold and clip something that might be holding up the unsewing here. Wonderful tool and probably the most dangerous thing on the table. 

The next and last item I used to mend the pants that won't die are my flat nose little jewelry pliers. I got to the hard, thick lump of the zipper bottom area and the machine would go no further. I was able to backstitch by hand with my big needle but could not push or pull it through the rock solid denim. Saved by the pliers! I grabbed the shaft of the threaded hand needle and put its point where I wanted it to sink in to make a back stitch. I held it with the flat head pliers and pushed the fabric down the shaft to get it through the denim. I then let go, turned the  fabric over and used the pliers to pull the needle through and was able to finish off the line of topstitching over that really nasty bump of fabric under the zipper, right exactly where the former topstitching had been. 

Completed pocket mend.

More notion comments and my process:

After opening all the seams I went to the ironing board. I had a very light blue tightly woven cotton that I cut into an approximate shape larger than the hole. It would show thru the hole and I wanted it to match the area of the jeans.  It would also serve as reinforcement. I pressed it on to a piece of  Steam A Seam Lite the same size, right side to glue SAS. I then trimmed this to the size of the hole but larger by about a half inch and pinked the edges. The paper was peeled off and the sticky side and right side/blue was placed on the wrong side of the jeans over the hole. I then took a piece of woven fusible, slightly larger than the patch and pinked and pressed that into place over the patch. These two layers of patch on the inside of the pants got fused down well with the iron. 

Turn the pants over and back to the top. Now for the thread. I use regular thread for the darning part. It hides better into the fabric.  For the hole near the pocket corner,  stitches were removed so I could peel that side of the pocket back and have plenty of space to work under the machine needle. Thread color is tricky. Denim always has white warp or weft. I forget which. I start with a white thread, even on darker jeans. I go back and forth with small stitches, like 1.5, in the white thread. I sew in the direction of the twill.  I then change to something that is similar to the majority color of the jeans. In this case the palest blue I had worked. If you have any denim anywhere to practice your thread colors, do it. You will be surprised at the colors that work here. It is almost never ever what is sold for jeans colored blue thread. I tried 3 or 4 colors before I bravely tried the baby blue and it worked. Remember, best results come with sewing WITH the twill, not against it. Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable to sew against the twill. 

Now for needles and topstitching thread! This was all against common sense.  I had the exact same jeans topstitching thread in my machine as on the jeans. It was H E A V Y. I put in my size 18 topstitching denim needle. Sharp and big. You would think that was what would work, right? I sewed. I would stop my machine as it would not sew through the thick stuff.  Frustrations. I decided to try something that worked for me when I fixed a friend's  super heavy ski jacket with it's waterproof thick zipper. Same issues. I went opposite and it worked beautifully. I changed to regular thread, put in a much smaller size 14 Microtex needle, and changed my stitch to the triple stitch. The one that goes over itself 3 times.  Or is it 2? No matter. It worked like a dream. The needle went through like butter and the stitches looked fine. I find when I do this I have to make the stitch length much longer than I plan. It just always seems to short. I used a 4.5 stitch length and it looked like a 3.5. So use a shorter needle, regular thread and the triple stitch.  It would have been easy to blame my machine and say it could not handle the heavy denim layers. Wrong! Think for a minute. If you were a couple of mice squeezing thru a hole to get into a space, who would get thru the hole? The big fat mouse or the little skinny mouse?  That is my new theory for sewing heavy fabrics and it is working great. Use a smaller, sharper needle and a finer thread. Done. With the heavy triple stitch my topstitching looked pretty close to the original and if anyone is close enough to notice any difference, they deserve more than a swat from the wearer's wife!

I've always enjoyed mending, having that basket next to me while I laze away stitching in front of the tube, a rare treat. Usually it takes at the most an afternoon. It's a great feeling to see that basket empty out. I celebrated with a glass of  Pinot and felt very accomplished when I looked at that empty basket. I will  now  let it take a few months to fill up again before I have another go at it. .......................Happy Mending! Bunny

Fur, Hems, and Bags!

Today I am begging off my Next Level Sewing. It's been a rough week around here. My hubby spent the week in the hospital with a serious infection and will need surgery soon. I no sooner got him home than I woke up Saturday morning with a dreadful cold. Right now I am just looking forward to a hot steamy shower to loosen some of this yuk out of my head and chest. I figured yesterday would  be a great time to face some little mending and some other projects that needed small spans of attention. No real mojo happening this weekend! But I do think there is a little to be learned in what I managed to do so I am passing it along.

First project was the bag. I purchased this bag before Thanksgiving, of course threw away the receipt, and not it is coming apart at the junction of the gusset, zipper and side. I LOVE THIS BAG. You will see it has a bit of bling  and is really pretty. Could I fix it? Upon inspection I think the junction was not sewn properly to begin with, Fast Fashion and all. But some how I was blinded by the bling when I bought the bag.

I

I used a combination of glue and stitching with white bead "wire" to give a secure fix.  I stitched one side of the zipper leather first. I used a heavy tapestry needle and went through the existing holes with a backstitch. Once that was done I put a big blop of glue where the zipper, the leather part , crossed over the side of the bag and clamped it. Then I stitched the other side of the zipper leather to the side of the bag.  Then I clamped the whole thing to dry. 

After a few hours I removed the clamps and used a brown fabric marker to color the white thread. I then rubbed the too dark thread with alcohol and that weakend the color and all is fine. It looks really good now and we will see how it holds up. 

Next chore, two pair of pants that needed hems lowered. This has become standard procedure lately around here. I am five feet tall and every pair of pants I buy needs shortening. I take up the hem. I double fold and try to make it look like the original hemline. Then a couple of months later the pants invevitably shrink despite all efforts at washing care and the hems need to be let down. To get max length back I need to lower them and what can happen is this is what you get:

A fringey, stringy mess that looks crappy. Here's how I handled it. 

I cut a strip of  fusible tricot that is wider than the edge of the hem to past the original stitching of the previous hemline. I place it right on the edge of the pant leg and fuse.

Now it is off to the machine with my edge stitching foot and I edge stitch to secure further the tricot to the pant leg. 

Sometimes I will stitch again further up to imitate the original as I did on these knit pants. 

The knit is  not too bad but you can see a nasty white line on the corduroy pants from the previous hem. Here's how I've dealt with that.  BTW, all these pics have been major lightened so you can see the detail. They look better IRL. 

On these cords I took a black sharpie and LIGHTLY rubbed it on the old hemline. Then I dipped a Qtip into good old rubbing alcohol and lightly rubbed the sharpie line to  blend it into the pants. I think you can see the difference between left and right here. I really like  both these pants and can now wear them beyond the two months it took to shrink them into near oblivion. Hope this hint helps some of you. Two pair of pants back in the rotation!

And now for the piece de resistance! My DD's mother in law had a fur coat made about ten years ago. She became tired of it, full length, and took it to be restyled. Evidently it is proper to return the not needed fur to the client. She had a muff made for my grandaughter and sent me the remaining leftovers. I thought it was very generous of her and I now have this windfall to play with. 

You can see the two sleeves they cut off. What  I really found interesting was the inside of the fur.  Here's a few pics:

Pretty fascinating, isn't it? This could maybe be a fur collar for my cashmere coat, a great hat, or just a cowl to be thrown over whatever. Any ideas? 

That's this week's output from the cave. My felt jacket is now totally done with it's covered shoulder pads but today is not a good one for modeling pics. They will come with a review of the pattern soon. Next Level Sewing will return as life settles down as well. Hope this nasty bug misses you all out there. I can't wait to get back in the cave! ....Bunny