Visible Mending and Creative Knitwear Repairs

I’ve found such satisfaction in bringing old jumpers back to life recently that I’ve decided to start offering a visible mending service to creatively repair your old knitwear.

More than 300,000 tonnes of clothing go to landfill each year in the UK, which is a very sizeable problem! One way to help reduce that amount, is to look after your clothing and repair it. Keeping clothing in use in your wardrobe for longer saves the amount going to landfill, and helps to reduce the amount you consume.

My hope is that by offering this service I can bring your old knitwear back to life, and mend it creatively so that you’re excited to wear it again!

Visibly Mending an Old Jumper

I had an old favourite jumper, which I hadn’t worn much in the last few years because it had a slight stain right at the front. I love the colour though, so I worn it anyway recently and discovered the elbows were almost completely worn through. I decided to get creative with it, and visibly mend it- this was going to change how the jumper looked, so I thought I might as well really go to town on it!

I love sharing the work in progress of these pieces, but this project was started one evening when the light was poor, so unfortunately I didn’t get any images of the worn elbows to show you- they start with the elbow patch partially completed.

Starting to reinforce the worn elbows of the jumper.

Adding decoration one the “patch” was done.

One of the finished elbows, with a little bit of extra work to hide a stain on the sleeve.

Using Creative Embroidery to Hide Stains

My mum used to have quite the collection of vintage tea cosies, which I always loved. Floral embroidery can be so lovely, and I loved all the flower combinations the they would have. So I used the vintage tea cosies as inspiration for this jumper, and using creative embroidery was a great way to cover up the stain on the front.

The jumper front before the cover up!

Work in progress

The finished jumper front, with slightly more embroidery than it technically needed to balance it out.

Turn something old into something that feels like new!

Now that I’ve turned the flaws on my jumper into something better, I’m suddenly really excited about wearing this jumper again! It’s easy to let things lie at the back of drawers, and then finally throw them out when you’re trying to make space, but it’s even nicer to feel like to you have something slightly new, just by having the holes fixed creatively! With this jumper, I now feel like it’s new and it’ll be worn all the time now.

The finished jumper, compete with visible mends!

I love wearing this jumper now- it’s like having a completely new garment.

If you would like to have your old knitwear visibly mended, do get in touch! Email me info@collingwoodnorrisdesign.com , ideally with some photos of the piece you’d like to have repaired, and we can discuss it.

If you would like to learn how to mend your knitwear yourself, come along to one of my workshops, or download one of my guides.