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.
