Is it nearly the end of May already? Where does the time go?? If it weren’t for the smell of lilacs and fresh green grass, I’d swear it were still February. And you don’t want me to start swearing.

Anyway, the Try Something New Every Month (TSNEM) theme for May was hand sewing. It’s a good thing I’d finished the project before the cat bit me and my right hand swelled like pork sausages in a hot oven. I have a picture of it but I won’t post it here. Let’s just stay on track for once.

At the start of the month, we had a little discussion in the TSNEM Facebook group about what projects we wanted to work on. I remembered seeing an article about “visible mending” a while back. In the middle of the discussion, I went in search of that one article and discovered that invisible mending was a “thing”! A real thing!
And since I had a huge tote full of stuff to mend, I figured the only way I was going to get to it was to have some fun. Enter a pair of my ex’s jeans that I’d confiscated after my cooking (really good cooking) made both of us gain weight. When his waistline outgrew them, they had little distressed holes at the knees. By the time I’d jammed my pointy patellas into them a few times, they looked like this…

I had a choice: I could throw them out, fix them, or shave my Wookiee-like appendages and keep wearing them with parts of me exposed. They were too comfortable to discard, shaving is problematic in ways I won’t recount, so that left mending. Visible mending! (Because it’s a thing!)

And as long as it’s a thing, I might as well create a new Pinterest board for it, right? Right! Didn’t that drop me down a whole other rabbit hole — two holes, in fact — Sashiko Embroidery and Deconstructed Denim. The former is now high on my list of things to master. The latter, well, I don’t think I want that much fashion in my closet.

Getting back to the mission at hand… Some old hemp yarn I got from a friend years ago found its purpose for being. It was the perfect colour to complement the faded denim. And I finally had an excuse to drop $2.50 for half a yard of yellow bandana fabric at the discount fabric store that was inconsiderate enough to locate itself 2 blocks from my front door.

Armed with my hemp yarn, embroidery needle, sturdy thimble, bandana patches and disintegrating jeans, I poked, pulled, cussed and stabbed myself until I ended up with this little piece of heartwork:
I have to say it was well worth the trouble. I’m finally in possession of one article of clothing that might be considered trendy, if not necessarily high fashion. And lots of inspiration to mend everything else I have in that tote bin of unwearables.

I’ll be back when I figure out what’s up for next month. Until then, go make something.

Tags: boyfriend jeans, hand sewing, Japanese sewing technique, Sashiiko, visible mending