Lately clothing ads coming over my transom have been featuring men’s shirts with an extra side button. When you put the usual buttonhole around THAT button, it pulls the shirt into an asymmetrical form-fitting wrapped number. Of course I immediately thought of how I’d do it myself…
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We were instantly riveted by @tumanualidades.de’s tiny videos of mending because they were so restful to watch, offering seemingly simple solutions to fixes we have in the past spent too much time worrying or procrastinating about. They called to mind a cosmic view of mending and sewing from some favorite artists.
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Over at Kleidersachen, we occasionally spot boldly stitched clothing that makes us wonder why we don’t take a need and thread to our clothes more often to jazz them up.
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Sometimes tiny inventions happen by seeing the possible solution out of the corner of your eye.
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We found a number of simple ideas for textiles in photos of a former Tuscan convent restored by designer Holly Lueders and her daughter. Our favorites are this very do-able paneled bedskirt and a pillow cover fashioned like a gift.
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Although initially pricey, shearling coats are a great clothing investment: they are incredibly warm and last years. But like anything, they begin to show wear. There IS a simple solution that will keep them going for years that I learned from Suzanne Shaker: turn your shearling inside out and have new zipper put in by…
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In July, we posted a compelling backpack we’d bought only to discover that its design was profoundly flawed. So we hacked the backpack to see if we could devise a fix, a lesson in trying ideas out, and flexing our own (untrained) design muscles to make things better or at the very least learn a few things.
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We love designer Zita Merényi’s Provo-CUT collection of seared-and-soldered neoprene garments. Forgoing traditional draping and stitching, these pieces are instead constructed panel-by-panel, pleated together, and heat-joined into dimensional, puffy, future-ish jackets and cloaks punctuated by thick, raw seams and unlikely openings. The gist: synthetic fabics melt, so heat, not thread can be used to join the seams.
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Just as we were wrapping our head around learning to use our new sewing machine, we noticed these big pillow covers on IKEA’S blog Livet Hemma… …which sent us hunting around Ikea USA to discover that it is selling 100% linen by the yard for 7.99 a 59″ yard in white and gray. We’ve long been fans…
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A reader alerted us to Maya Donenfeld’s great book Reinvention: Sewing with Rescued Materials. Donenfeld writes the popular blog Mayamade. We are impressed by her philosophy which underlies every project: to create something new from what already exists. She loves the challenge of making “something out of nothing” (and so do we).
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