Mending Pile success story

If you are known for your sewing skills, sooner or later someone will ask you to mend something for them.  This happened to me twice in the past week.  I could look upon these requests as potentially derailing me from *accomplishing* something in the sewing room; this could be a large distraction, preventing me from finishing a project this month.  And, in the past, this has been my attitude.  (I apologize to family who had to listen to a tirade from my selfish side when they asked me to hem their pants or sew on a button or two.)

Sweetie came back from world travels with a University of Amsterdam hoodie that needed the front facings tacked down.  (Ok, the original request was for me to cut the darn things off.)  And, Sweetie's teenage son tore a hole in the seat of his *very favorite* jeans.

Mission accomplished!  I accepted the challenge of pleasing the folks who put up with my hours of hibernation in the sewing studio.  And I did it in a timely manner: less than a week turnaround.

I used an inside patch on the jeans, much to the delight of teenage son.  (He said kids pay good money to have their pants look like that.  Abercrombie chic: go figure.)  I used Wonder Under to fuse a patch of excess jeans material under the torn area.  I then stitched around the edge of the patch, and criss-crossed stitching over the surface of the torn area.  The picture doesn't show the detail overly well, but hopefully you get the idea.  Final step was to use pinking shears around the edge of the patch on the inside.  The result is a visible tear, but the structure of the jeans is supported.

Sweetie's hoodie facings were "tacked down" using Stitch Witchery as a bonding agent.  I have a large sheet of the stuff, so I cut off 1 3/4" wide sections to cover most of the facing.  I bonded from just above the bottom ribbing to about three-fourths of the way up the zipper, leaving the facing free around the neckline.  I did this both because the neckline area wasn't such a problem for the facings coming loose, and also because I didn't completely love the increased stiffness provided by the Stitch Witchery, so I wanted the neckline to remain untouched.  The photo above shows some fancy stitching I did to the pocket area.  The pockets were not attached, except at the side seam and the bottom ribbing, leading to some unattractive droopiness and added bulk around the middle.  Ugh--who wants that?  So I used a temporary spray adhesive to flatten the pocket against the front of the hoodie, and top-stitched two rectangles to anchor the top and front edge of the pocket.  For the size of the rectangles, I used a tab insert from an index divider ('cuz I'm clever like that).  I think it turned out so cute!  And very wearable.