Patching - Blog Posts

Mending my favourite vintage night gown

I got this nightgown at a vintage shop a few months ago, for not an insignificant amount of money let’s be honest, and it was love at first sight. Unfortunately, I wore it for a single weeks before a nasty tear appeared in the sleeve. I already had to strengthen the neckline trim and patch the inside yoke so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but still, I was kind of pissed off since I paid kind of a lot of money for it. Anyways, here’s my repairing process in pictures:

1) The torn fabric (zoom on the picture to see just how bad it was)

2) Basting the patch. The fabric was so worn I used two patches, one inside and one outside, to securely sandwich the delicate zone and prevent future tearing.

3) I was loosely inspired by sashiko for the mending so, last night I went into a mending rampage and drew a grid before starting on the stitching proper, making up a pattern as I went on. No picture of the grid pre-stitching because it was 11pm and I had lost any sense of time and space.

4) The patched up nightgown, with the topmost buttonhole strengthened before it started spontaneously disintegrating too.

I am super happy with my pseudo-sashiko mending pattern and will really research this technique of embroidery and mending for future use!