Friday, November 04, 2016

Moth attack rescue

This is more a rescue than a refashion, because the clothes are about the same before and after.  Apart from the holes... A year or so ago, we moved out of our house while it was being gutted and renovated.  Unbeknownst to me, the house we moved into was infested with clothing moths.  I found out when I pulled my winter clothing out of storage 6 months later and found all the holes.  And the moths had great taste - the cashmere and pure wool items only, none of your cheaper acrylic blends...
 
It's taken a while, and I'm still slowly working through the repairs.  Some I've been able to mend invisibly (Yay!) but then there were some other favourites like these.  I like them too much to just give up and go straight to felting so - into the chest freezer for a few days, washed and dried outside in the UV light, then time to find the holes:


This one has safety pins marking the holes, and is a WIP. 

For some reason only the right arm was damaged on this grey cardigan, so the left side embellishments are just to even it up (sorry the detail is oriented the wrong way).  I used scraps of fleece material to secure and reinforce the biggest holes, then doodled the rest of the planetary orbits in cotton embroidery thread until it looked right:





And this one had tiny holes but the knit is so fine I didn't like the way it looked after mending.  Now it has autumn leaves falling over it.


Happy refashioning (and rescuing)!

Mimi

4 comments:

RanchHouse said...

Oh wow!!! I have some of the same. I washed and mothballed some in hopes of future refashions. Some sweaters I frogged and reknit into scarves. Thanks for the inspiration.

eimear said...

the fixes are wonderful.

Sandy said...

These are brilliant. Love the planet idea.
Sandy in the UK

jennifer elliott said...

Very clever fixes.

Jennifer EOD