Reminisce on your 8th grade Home Ec classes and try salvaging your clothes instead of throwing them away. We live in a throwaway culture that not only hurts the money in our pockets but the environment too!
Here are a few DIY tips to help you save your clothes!
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So your jeans have ripped, and it isn’t trendy?
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We’ve all been afflicted by an awkward tear in your favourite jeans. Yes I recently managed to tear by jeans with the classic ‘should not have bent over’ move. And yes I did wrap a jumper around my waist.
Salvage your jeans with these simple steps.
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- Clean it up!
Carefully cut fraying threads and use your scissors to cut a shape for the patch to fill (this is your chance to get a little creative e.g. stars, love hearts, circles)
- Size up your patch
Turn the jeans inside out in order to use some fusible tape (holds the patch in place for the next step). Cut your patch of fabric to size and make sure the edges overlap a little (1/4 inch).
- Let’s Fuse
Turn your iron on and cut the fusible tape pieces so that they line the border of the hole. Lay your patch so that the correct side is facing down towards the outside of the jean and iron. The adhesive tape should fuse the jean and patch together.
- Stitch it up
Stitch over the edges several times. Make sure you sew in different directions as you overlap the stitches. You can darn (cover the entire) patch with stitches if you like the look.
- Get Creative!
Your hole is patched but you can finish your jeans off with some quirky details. Embroidery patches aren’t great functionally but they are funky! If you don’t like the look of patched fabric, try covering it with an embroidered patch.
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Fix a Snag In your Knit Jumper
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Check out this youtube video from withwendy on how to fix that scraggily jumper that you can’t help pulling the thread of.
How to treat oil stains
PRE-Pretreat! Scrub the stain, wash & dry!
Regular Fabric
Scrub with baking soda (saves lives), apply some dishwashing soap and then launder as usual
Wool Fabric
Scrub with corn starch then soak in cold soapy water. Dry by rolling the garment between a towel, then stretch it back out.
Serious Set-In Stains
Coat with WD40, scrub with baking soda, then apply some dish washing soap. You can then launder as usual.
Remember the dryer is not your friend!