How to Sew a Hole

Video Transcript

"Today we're at Deluxe Clothing Store where we sell resale clothing and local designers fashions and we also do alterations. And today we're going to demonstrate doing repairs on clothing. And this repair today will be mending a hole in a sweater. So the first thing you want to do is match up your thread and when you do matching threads you make sure you take the thread sample off the spool because it can look completely different than if you just hold the spool up next to it. It can look totally off, darker or lighter. So when you take a piece of thread off and hold it against the fabric and it kind of disappears then you know you've got the right color. So you just take a length of thread not too long because the longer it is the more it tends to knot. And I personally do not use knots because they can wear off, pull out. So I use three little loops to start my sewing. And you can start by doing just three tiny little places. The second loop you do close to the first but not right into the first because it'll just pull the thread out. And I know it's kind of hard to see because we've got matching thread but three loops will lock it into practically any fabric you use whether it be really slippery fabric or really heavy duty fabric. And I like to mend from the outside because it seems that you can gage how neat it's looking as you're going along. Okay so I've got my loops on the inside and what I'm going to do is see where your hole is, I like to kind of round up the edges a little bit first to kind of get any loose edges. And sometimes it's a matter of just kind of reweaving a little hole. You can do that with a crochet needle if it's a big sweater. But if it's a little part like this you want to get close but not to close to the edges because then it'll just pull out the broken threads. So you just go from one side over to the other side and pull it taut but don't buckle it. Now I know there's different methods where you can make it look like it's disappearing or if your hole is more length wise you want to do it side to side. You want to make it kind of blend in as much as possible with the knitting or the grain of the fabric. As you can see it's closing up very nicely. So you want to do it close enough, again, where you're getting a nice strong bond. And I'm actually kind of at the end of the hole here. And you can go over it the opposite way, too. If you know the broken thread is right where your fabric is you can also do the, I'm going to bring my needle back through the back side, and you can reinforce it by doing those three loops at the end. If there's a particularly, if there's an area that looks like it's going to unravel more. But I think this one is pretty successful just doing it once over like this. You do your three little knots, or three, not knots, you do your three little loops to lock it back into place. And you don't want to cut your thread super close to the fabric because if there's any pull the first time you wear it it'll tend to maybe pull on the first loop. So you just leave about an eighth of an inch. And there's our mending. I mean sometimes it shows more than other times. You can also set it by kind of pressing it. Stretching a little bit in different directions to make it disappear more into the fabric. And sometimes just ironing it will help but. Ironing will help to set the part that you kind of pulled taut in there and it'll set it down flatter. So that's just an easy stitching of a hole."