Mending series: part 5

Wearing the repaired sheepskin coat and Morgan jeans!

I recorded a podcast last week about a sewing day I had planned with my bestie, who came to visit our new house for the first time last week. It was a lovely to see her, we went for a walk in Glen Affric, did a charity shop trawl and got coffee, and talked about house and garden plans for both of our new homes. We’re both in the renovation phase of life, so it was wonderful to be able to knit, sew, and dream about our future homes and gardens.

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I had a pile of mending and alterations I wanted to work through, including a sweatshirt needing a patch on the chest, a sheepskin coat needing a hole in the armpit repaired, a pair of jeans needing a new button, a pair of trousers needing taken up, and two half-finished Blackbird Fabrics Bestie bags to complete.

I should have made myself a list before I started recording this podcast, because I realise now I forgot to talk about the sheepskin coat repair, which was arguably the most epic of the mends. This coat was gifted to me by my mother-in-law, having been her sister’s, then hers, and now mine. I think it dates from the 1980s, and I wore it a lot when she first gave it to me. It’s warm and thick, with the leather material acting as a wind barrier, as well as keeping out the cold. Sadly, after several winters of wearing it almost non-stop, it developed a large hole in the armpit so I was forced to retire it, lest the hole get bigger over time. A stitch in time and all that.

At the time (I think this was early 2020 if I remember correctly), I didn’t feel able to repair this myself, so I took it to a tailor to get an opinion. This was just before lockdown I think, so I never went ahead with the repair, and the coat went into storage for the last 5yrs. Since then I’ve sewn a lot with leather, so felt more confident to affect this repair myself.

I started by unpicking the armpit seam, then cut away the damaged piece of leather. I found some leather in my stash that was a decent match for colour (thank you to my parents’ old dining room chairs for the donation) and cut a pair of appropriately sized patches, with the intention to have one on the inside, one on the outside, with the coat material sandwiched in the middle. This would approximately match the weight of the sheepskin and stabilise the edges of the cut leather. I then planned to sew the armpit closed again, this time catching the patch in the seam.

I cut the first patches too small, so had to try again with a larger pair. Sewing a neat square around the hole was easy, the tricky part was trying to sew the armpit closed again. I realised part of the seam had been topstitched, so after sewing it closed and realising it looked awful and puckered when worn, I unpicked my stitches and hand sewed the topstitched areas back down. I then machine sewed the underarm and ended up with a repair that, whilst not perfect, is close enough to be invisible to anyone not staring into my armpit.

That repair took the majority of my mending time, meaning the rest of the repairs flew by. I talk about the others in the podcast, some are yet to be completed but I finished the machine sewing sections, and will spend some time on the sofa in front of Succession finishing off the hand sewing parts. It’s very satisfying to have most cleared my sewing to do list, so I can focus on some more exciting and joyful projects in the future!

Some links from this episode:

• My previous Morgan jeans, which got a new button

• Bestie bags by Blackbird Fabrics Patterns

• Angry Girls Club patch by AnnekeCaramin on Etsy, used to Amyify a sweatshirt passed down to me from Andrew

• My Spring joy plans!

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