Simple mending can save a piece of clothing from the rag bag or trash.  Usually it just takes a couple of minutes, but thinking about doing the mending is hard.  Just do it!  You’ll be so glad you did.

My daughter’s favorite shorts had a drawstring with eyelet holes.  One of the eyeles ripped out and left a hole that threatened to get bigger.  Normally I would have slipped it into my mending basket and left it to sit until they no longer fit.  Fortunately my daughter needed them for camp and I had to act fast.

1.  First I removed the drawstring which was for style only and not really functional.

2.  Then I used a scrap of fusible interfacing on the front and back to reinforce the torn fabric.

3.  Then I picked a scrap of fabric from my stash and ironed a piece of Wonder Under Regular-Weight Paper-Backed Fusible Web to the scrap.

4.  The Wonder Under has a paper backing that is easy to draw on.  I used a pencil to draw a heart shape patch and then cut the fabric on the pencil lines.  (It’s so much easier to cut out fusible shapes after the wonder under is fused to the fabric than to cut the shapes first.)

5.  I peeled off the paper backing and ironed the patch over the hole.  I set my machine to a satin stitch (a zig-zag with a width of 3.0 and a length of .5) and top stitched all around the edge.   It’s not perfect, but it’s sturdy and the whole process took about 5 minutes.