Sometimes when I make a quilt with both brightly colored and white fabrics, I or the quilt recipient washes it without putting a Shout Color Catcher Sheet in the machine with it, and it ends up looking like this: My solution for this problem has usually been Clorox Bleach Pens, but my local supermarket no longer carries them and I … Read more
When I visited Mindy Celeste this summer, I snagged my Icebreaker wool running tights on the pull-out metal frame of the sofa bed. My former way of fixing this would have been to patch it with a scrap of knit fabric. Now that I have a darning foot for my sewing machine, I darned it instead. The darning stitch is … Read more
My sister made me this blue comforter about 15 years ago. Unfortunately, the first house where I lived with it had a mouse problem so I ended up washing it in the machine more often than I should have otherwise. As a result, the edges have frayed. Some of the fabric wore through, too. Then Lilo the cat snacked on … Read more
How to mend a pillowcase after your cat (or dog, or child, or the local fabric-eating banshee) eats a corner of it. Read more …
I’m still working on mending some things that Lilo the cat ate before she was taking medicine for her fabric-eating compulsion. This project is a duvet cover that she nibbled near one of the corners. I sewed a seam around the hole, at an angle that connected the side and bottom (using white thread, below). I trimmed off the excess … Read more
I have a futon in my basement that’s between the size of a twin and a double mattress. Since it’s impossible to fold a flat sheet around the corners (there’s nothing to tuck them into), it really needed a fitted sheet for those times when it is used for sleeping. It was easy to convert an old fitted twin sheet … Read more
In December, I wrote a post about this comforter from Target that had developed a few snags in it. I covered one of the snags with this applique: … and then I set it aside and did nothing about the other snags until summer came. On this snag — — I sewed a four-point star sewn from four kite-shaped pieces. I … Read more
As I shared last week, my current piecing obsession is eight-pointed stars. I’ve gotten better at matching up all the points in the center, so of course I immediately decided to make things challenging again by turning one of my eight-point stars into a sixteen-point star. Usually, you would finish off an eight-point star by sewing triangles and squares into the … Read more
I’ve been playing around with eight-pointed stars lately. The best tutorial videos I’ve found on the subject are done by Edyta Sitar and the Fat Quarter Shop. She shows some great methods for getting all the points aligned just right. I made this 32-piece one following some, but not all, of her advice. I was working with odd-shaped scraps of fabric, … Read more
A while back I posted about Lilo, the Incredible Fabric-Eating Cat, and how she scarfed down the corner of a throw pillow my mom made for me a a few Christmases ago. After she made it her prey, it looked like this: I let it sit in the mending pile for many months, because I wasn’t sure how to fix it. … Read more