One of the things about making sure I have a wardrobe that I love is that I’m actually much more likely to try to repair or revive something first if it’s an easy fix instead of just tossing it or trying to give it away at a swap meet to someone more handy than me. I’ve resewn about 3 different hems by hand, re-attached a bunch of buttons, and closed tiny holes in favorite tights or cardigans. They aren’t perfect fixes but I love them too much to give them up completely and as most of my stuff is black anyway the thread I use is fairly invisible even if it’s not the best repair job.
The repair I did on my coat however was going to be a little more visible. I wasn’t exactly sure how to do this as this coat has a texture I’ve not worked with before being 80% wool. As my everyday coat I absolutely love it, but I also wear a backpack everyday to commute to work during which I definitely make 10,000 steps per day when I do my full commute. With all that rubbing this is what happened to the back of the coat:
See the line where the backpack has rubbed thin spots in the fabric? There’s even a tiny hole on one side! Yikes!! But I love this coat, and want to keep wearing it! But I don’t want the hole or thin spots to get bigger and less repairable. My solution is thus: make a bar like some coats have on the back. Lots of lolita coats have a bow there but that would be too bulky for my purposes. Instead I’m aimed for a kind of squat elongated heart shape like these:
But failing that I was going to try for just a largish bar over the spots similar to these:
I started by making a pattern on paper so I could measure it with the coat and all of my backpacks to figure out how much fabric I was going to need and how large I wanted to make this heart so that it can do what I wanted it to do and protect the coat from further rubbing from my bags.
I made a mock-up from leftover bit from other projects to get a better feel for if my idea was possible with a weight of fabric closer to what the coat is and pin it to the coat to see how it looked and voilà! Coat heart thing!
The front
The back.
(I never claimed to be a perfect seamstress!)
Since I’ve never successfully gotten the hang of my button hole maker on my sewing machine and there’s only two button holes so I practiced a hand-made button hole technique (I originally learned from Bernadette Banner on Youtube but that video is gone now!) seen here on The Yorkshire Tailor Youtube though I don’t have a ‘gimp’ I just did thread.
I'd got my pattern mocked up I knew how much fabric I'd need so it was off to the fabric store! The coat is 80% wool blend so I got a small bit of wool blend since I didn't need much.
I managed to find a suitable black wool blend and used some leftover black lining from other projects to cut out my pieces. Sewn up just like the mockup I had a heart! There's a few bits that needed some hand finishing where I didn't quite get it right but overall I think it was successful!!
I've been wearing my coat like this (with a few adjustments to the buttons and adding some safety pins on the inside so it doesn't flap around when putting on my bags) for a little while now and have actually gotten quite a few compliments on the heart specifically from complete strangers! I often get compliments on this coat but I'm glad that my repair looks like it works with the coat and not like some random incongruous bit I stuck on there to cover a hole! If I find some black lace I think will look good I'll add it in the future but for now most of it is covered when I'm wearing the coat and my bags anyway so it's good for now.
Have you ever loved a piece that need a visible or creative repair and did it because you just couldn't stand to part with it yet? What did you end up doing for it? Let us know in the comments!
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