Mend March Debrief*

I went into Mend March knowing I was unlikely to meet all the daily prompts. I’ve tried enough of these monthly challenges to know I’m not very good at them! But I did a lot of mending and fixing up, and I posted 20 times, and as the late great Meatloaf once said, Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad.

I mended more than I posted. I fixed a few holey tights. I’ve renovated several pairs of knickers and two bras, bringing them back to comfortable wearability.

But it wasn’t all undies – I fixed a hole in a dress (that was right on my bum).

Holey dress fix, Batman!
Sorry – as soon as the word Holey was there, I knew there was going to be a Holy [something] Batman reference. I’m a child of my time… Anyway, clicky for a bigger picture, to see the full detail of how well fixed up it is

I updated the neckline of a dress that I made quite recently, that had ended up a bit too gapey. I had some leftover fabric left, so I gave it a neckband. More of a Fix than a Mend, but it still counts. It makes the dress a lot more wearable.

I did the Punk Smocking to fix another dress with a gapey neckline.

I also got started on tackling a Big Scary Mend that had been scaring the pants off me, for the last couple of years. I made a lovely Sew Over It Zoe Dress back in 2017, using a completely bonkers Massive Paisley print**. Somehow, at some point, the fabric in one sleeve got thoroughly shredded. The other sleeve is fine. It was such a mess that the dress has been hanging in my wardrobe all this time, waiting for me to get the courage up to do something about it.

Before – you can’t tell from the photo how scraggy all that shredded fabric is!

The whole spirit of Mend March had given me enough confidence to at least give this a try. I decided to start at the cuff, which was a bit worn, and just gradually move upwards. And it turns out, it’s not scary at all. I could do it all with basic darning and a bit of lining fabric to hold everything together. It’s a cross between visible and invisible mending. It’s visible but camouflaged by the bonkerness of the print!

After. Well technically it’s still During, because there are some other bits in the armpit and bodice that I want to reinforce, but all the shredded fabric has been tamed!

I was also happy that I was able to do this using thread and lining fabric that I already had in stash. Because this post may be all about #MendMarch2024, but I’m still very conscious that I’m also doing #LastSewistStanding. I’ve managed to keep in the Heavyweight division. My main motivation is not disappointing Miss Taeschli! And mending is very much in the spirit of LSS – it means you’re using what you’ve got to avoid buying new stuff.

I’m happy that I’ve got a load of other menders in my feed now, to inspire and encourage me. I’ve got more techniques to experiment with as my mending journey continues. So Mend March has been a Big Win for me! Big thanks go to Kate Sekules (@visiblemend on Instagram) for setting up the challenge in the first place, and running it throughout March this year. It’s been a massive inspiration to me.

We all thought this would be the last one, because of Instagram’s stupid hashtag policy making it really difficult to follow tags. But we coped this year with microtags for each day, and Kate has confirmed Mend March will be back in 2025, so that’s a lovely thing to look forward to – Hooray!

Mend March may be over, but that doesn’t mean the mending will be going away! I will continue to rummage through the underwear drawer, to make sure I’m fixing up holes, adding new elastic and replacing worn gussets*** as needed.

* And I use the word advisedly!
** You might see other images in that Paisley print – I couldn’t possibly comment.
*** Gussets! Fnur, Fnur!

Experiment in Punk Smocking

My latest Instagram crush is Kate Sekules, @visiblemend on Instagram. She is a champion of mending and fixing, and one of her mending methods is Punk Smocking.

I’ve stolen some images from Kate’s Instagram, to demonstrate. Happy to take down, Kate, if you don’t approve.

It’s a great way to change the shape of a garment in a gloriously decorative way. So one of my Mend March projects was to use punk smocking as a way to bring the stretched out neckline of this very old T-shirt dress back into shape.

Since I’m still on the #LastSewistStanding No Buy challenge (I’ve done over a month, go me!), I checked my yarn stash and picked out a pale green cotton yarn. I also thanked past Bea for having acquired some tapestry needles with a big enough eye to thread the cotton yarn, and a sharp enough point to go through Jersey.

Kate hasn’t given us a tutorial for punk smocking as such. But it seemed pretty free hand and intuitive. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing. Nothing went wrong! I took three evenings to do some random stitching around the neckline, leaving long tails. The only rule I gave myself was not to get my wires crossed, because regular smocking doesn’t cross threads.

I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous about pulling all those threads. What if I had completely misunderstood how it was supposed to work? What if it looked stupid? But I was really happy with how it turned out!

Yay! It worked!

I did a marathon session of knotting off the threads to keep the gathers secure. Then I did another round of trimming the tails to approximately 10cms, and knotting the ends to avoid them fraying in use or in the wash (216 knots, if you’re interested).

Knots Galore…

And now I can wear this dress again!

Mend March

No sooner do I take on one challenge (Last Sewist Standing – update: I’m still standing, despite being ambushed by all the beautiful fabric shops of Goldhawk Road last weekend), than I go crashing headlong into another…

This month is Mend March, a challenge set up and hosted by Kate Sekules, aka @VisibleMend on instagram. It celebrates all the beauty and usefulness of mending your clothes.

This may be the last Mend March, Kate warns us, because of Instagram being so rubbish about hashtags at the moment. Maybe the algorithm will be tweaked, who knows? I really hope it won’t be the last.

So why did I commit to this? I’m trying to be more thoughtful and considered about my impact on the planet. I’m no Greta, but I’m trying to do my bit, to keep fabric out of landfill, and make the best use of the clothes (and fabric) I’ve got.

Mending may be about sustainability, but it’s also about looking after the clothes you love, so you can keep wearing them and loving them. I’ve got a couple of dresses that are a bit broken and need fixing, and if I can fix them I get to keep wearing them!

I’m trying to post daily on my instagram. History shows that I’m not very good with daily prompted challenges but I’m giving it a good old try. I’m not promising to meet the daily prompts, but I’m aiming to do *some* mending every day in March. Admittedly up till now its been mostly underwear. I’ve been going for the easy wins, especially on school nights, and double especially on nights when I’m teaching and don’t get home till 9.30 or 10pm. But there will be more exciting posts coming up at weekends when I have a bit more mindspace…

Let’s see how far I can get with this one!

Some Mending

The problem: the lace on this otherwise perfectly ok pair of knickers had perished.

Time for some mending… I had some black stretch lace in stash. I’ve never been a fan of black and red lingerie, it makes me think of unimaginative husbands buying gifts for their wives on Christmas Eve. But I didn’t have any choice, I wasn’t going to buy more lace, for the sake of using 30cms x 20cms of it. Use what you have. I carefully cut out the rubbish red lace, and used it as a template.

I pinned the new black lace into the remaining skeleton of red elastic.

I needed to keep the elastic… um, elastic. So I used a herringbone stitch to sew the lace onto the elastic. It’s not very neat, but nobody is inspecting the insides of my undies but me, and I’m not too judgy.

One final addition. I like my gussets to come up higher at the front than the shops do. So I added a bit of extra height with some black jersey from an old pair of leggings. Still using what I have.

And now I have a fully functional pair of knickers back in my undies drawer, and I reckon they’re better than when I first got them new.