Been getting into the habit of mending my own clothes, it's pretty fun. My jeans have four patches on them (mainly small), sewed the torn armpit of a jacket, and the groin, belt buckle friction hole, and butt of some hiking pants. I will ship of Theseus them until the final black hole evaporates.
2 months ago 路 馃憤 jo, bookscorpion, drh3xx, bavarianbarbarian, zeerooth, lykso, drmollytov
maybe then we should ask robert poulson for a solution... xD 路 2 months ago
@bavarianbarbarian One day, that joke will not be made when someone instigates a conversation about the film or novel. One, faraway day. 路 2 months ago
@five_over_four never heard of that movie... or have you broke the first rule? :) 路 2 months ago
@bavarianbarbarian bizarrely, I *just* rewatched Fight Club, just hours ago. 路 2 months ago
In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway. wake up Neo... 路 2 months ago
PS. my patches are made of old pillowcases and an out-of-use cotton bedsheet that will last forever. 路 2 months ago
@drh3xx Baste is just when you go straight forward, up-down. Easiest and fastest, and also weakest. Honestly, can't go wrong with back-stitching. I'm a total beginner, myself, so I'm certainly going wrong with some best practices, but I think that if you just do a reasonable job, it's pretty hard to mess up a patch in a way that it won't hold. But I see really long baste mostly used as a temporary attachment so you can get the proper stitching in. Shrug. My patches are a mess, but they definitely hold. 路 2 months ago
@five_over_four thanks for the tip. Will have to look up what exactly a baste-stitch is; I can hand-sew but running, back and cross are about the only kind of stitching I've had any experience with. Think we tried machining once during my time at school. 路 2 months ago
@drh3xx The groin is relatively simple. Just do it before it tears- "a stitch in time saves nine," you know? You can just baste-stitch a little patch across its edges from the seam to a little over the strained area in each direction, and then do a few passes along the patch in the direction of the stress. Should hold well enough. 路 2 months ago
@bookscorpion Socks are a bit of an unfortunate one. Fabrics (and pretty much everything in the world) are getting to be so low-quality that they simply wear thin within a few wears, so mending them is usually a wasted effort. Pants are worthwhile- I'm using some old pillowcases for patches. I have a huge bedsheet of strong cotton, too, for that. 路 2 months ago
Comparatively speaking I buy next to no clothes. Most of my new clothing is either a gift because someone else had felt sorry for my rags or else footwear that has truely had it. I only own 1 pair of boots and 1 pair of trainers (+1 additional pair when I'm running regularly). Having said all that, I should perhaps take the time to attempt repair of more of my clothing. I'd say the worn through crotch of trousers/jeans are my biggest reason to get rid of stuff but the "T-Zone" seems like an awkward place to effect a reliable repair as a beginner. A patch on a worn knee I could do, but, the crotch with it's usually fairly heavy duty seam :/ 路 2 months ago
I sat at my kitchen table the other day, mending socks my partner has knitted for me with thread I had handspun myself, and I felt like my own great-grandmother :D Needlefelting a patch from unspun wool directly onto the fabric is a fun thing to do, depending on the fabric (it won't hold on all of them) 路 2 months ago
Have recently started doin the same. Going for the "obvious mend" approach at present as Imy skills aren't good for much else. For now! Here's to resisting entropy -- and the excesses of capitalism. 路 2 months ago