Mending means giving your favourite clothes a second chance!
Here is a nice faux leather pants whose elastic has gone... well, bad. Essentially, the elastic band was not sewn securely enough, so with wear, it broke at the seam.
I took out enough stitches to access the inner elastic band and replaced the elastic band with a new one. Now, my client can enjoy this pair of pants again.
Next one is at the sleeve. The sleeve elastic band had come undone. Once the chainstitch breaks, the stitches can unravel very easily, which is what happened to this one. I had an easy time taking out the rest of the stitches because all it took was a simple pull on the right part of the thread.
Also, the stitches around the thumb hole were broken because they just used a regular straight stitches. The thumb holes are stretched often when a thumb is inserted and taken out.
I thought about using just straight stitches with a stretch thread, but I figured that will probably break eventually because the elasticity in the stretch thread is not that much. So, I used zigzag stitches for the repair. I used the zigzag stitches on the elastic band around the sleeve for the same reason. All those choices were made with the client, so we knew what the outcome would be like. In order to make a garment reusable and durable, sometimes it cannot look exactly like the original. This is because the original sewing techniques were not very good and failed. That is perhaps how the large clothing manufacturers ensure that you keep on buying new clothes because they break...
If you need anything repaired, please feel free to contact me.