Friday, 23 February 2024

Ben's t-shirt

My big project this month was this simple cotton jersey t-shirt that Ben wore so much that the material has worn thin. It's weave is now super fragile and it had 20+ holes, both big and small. Sometimes I created more by accident whilst puncturing the cloth with my needle.

Ben's t-shirt

The holes are all there because a previous line of stitching split and tore, mostly in the neck area. I think that's where the shirt chafed the most against the skin. I thought of several ways to go about it, and initially thought I could close up all the holes one by one with my sewing machine but I got too scared that the machine needle would do more damage to the fabric of the shirt. I picked up a darning needle and some red thread instead.

The thread with which the shirt is made is a lot of thinner than my darning thread. Usually you're supposed to pick something that comes close to the weight of thread used in the garment, but that's almost impossible in this case. I first reinforced the fabric by stitching in straight lines around the hole and then filled up the holes. Because there were so many holes it became quite difficult to keep the stitching straight, especially because of the curve in the neck area, but I decided to be ok with that. I think the darned patches turned out looking like a composition of different islands.

Close-up of darning

Next to the holes on the back of the shirt, the neck (the edge of the shirt) was frayed as well. This is the most difficult part to mend usually because it's hard to keep the tension. I decided against darning these areas and reinforced them instead with a blanket stitch.

Before and after darning