Tag Archives: easy mending

Dressing Gown Mend

This decorative visible mend, which I did over Christmas, has given my much loved old dressing gown a new lease of life! I’m rather ashamed to have been wearing it in such a state, the collar was badly frayed and worn, as were the cuffs. Luckily I already had everything I needed to fix it, lovely printed cotton fabric and stripe cotton tape both from The Knitting & Stitching Show a few years ago, and oddments of embroidery thread.

To keep some body to the collar I stitched all the broken threads flat to form a firm base, before pinning the cotton patch over the top and hand sewing with a tiny slip stitches. For the decorative stitching on the patch I chose red and yellow embroidery thread (spliting off 2 strands) matching the colours of the stripe tape. The tape was pinned to the collar seam and tacked it in place and I used red embroidery thread to sew a running stitch all the way round.

Decorative mending tutorial

I’m delighted to have a ‘decorative mending’ tutorial published at From Britain With Love here is a link to it frombritainwithlove.com/easy-visible-mending-with-sequins . From Britain With Love is a blog and directory of ethical UK makers, growers and creatives.

This year two of my favourite cardigans emerged from Winter storage full of moth holes. In years gone by one of them would have been binned but now I see the damage as a creative challenge, thinking of ways to give them a new lease of life.

I disguised the damage with clusters of sequins, and in the process gave them a really unique and personal touch. I was really keen to share this decorative mending idea, because it needs so little sewing knowledge but looks amazing!