Mending – Josh Durham

For this mending assignment, I didn’t have any sentimental or valuable clothes with me that I wanted to mend or embellish, so I focused on a practical repair and functional mending so I could practice my hand sewing skills.  My first project I focused on was repairing a torn sleeve on a button-down shirt.  The shirt had a 4″ long tear near the buttons on the cuff of the sleeve.  Since this is a shirt that I could wear regularly in a professional environment, I wanted to make sure that the repair was very subtle and not noticeable, so I mended the damage with embroidery floss that is very similar to the color of the fabric.  The repair is very subtle, but the consistency of the satin stitch along the tear is fairly consistent and satisfying.

For my second mending project, I wanted to focus on a functional embellishment while improving my sewing handing skills.  I had some old t-shirts with me, so I decided to create a pocket and add that to one of these shirts for practice.  The shirt already had a chest emblem, so I created a new pocket to append onto the shirt.  The yellow pocket is made from a square of fabric cut off of a different t-shirt, and I used both running stitches and back stitches to clean up the pocket and securely attach it to the shirt.  The pocket is a bit large and is able to hold fairly large objects due to the t-shirt fabric being so flexible, but I enjoyed this project since it allowed me to practice my sewing skills on a practical addition to a shirt rather than only decorative embellishments.