this was my parents’ laundry basket that i took with me when i moved out nearly a decade ago. the handles snapped off years before i even took it with me, and it’s been slowly acquiring more and more cracks, but i didn’t want to toss it when it was still usable.

i used a candle and a large needle i didn’t care about and heated up the needle in the candle flame and poked some holes around the cracks (see pic 4) and then sewed it up tightly with some thread. i had to stop every few pokes and heat up the needle to wipe off the excess plastic, but it worked pretty well otherwise. if you swipe to the end you can see i’ve still got a bunch of cracks to mend, but i have a bad back and can only work for so long without it complaining 😅

i’m not much of a sewist and this is the first time i’ve attempted something like this so if you have any recommendations for things to change when fixing the rest of the problems i’m happy to hear them!

My kid uses the side seam "tagged" on his shirts as comfort items. Won't wear shirts with no tags. So I added a ribbon tag to make this cute Yellowstone shirt wearable for him.

The verdict: "I like my new ribbon taggie, mama!

The foam grip on my sporn dog leash was barely holding on.

I tacked it in place with some stitches, so it’d stay still for the mend.

I made a single crochet rectangle a bit smaller than the area to wrap around. After laying it over the foam, I whip stitched down the length of the rectangle. At the ends, I wove yarn in and out to make a drawstring and cinched it tight.

The yarn is Lion Brand “the cottony one” in Hot Chocolate. It feels nice in my hand, and I don’t think I’m at risk of rope burn.

the cover of my headphone cushion finally died (after a year of using them daily) so i crocheted a new one :)

I posted a few weeks ago after my dog mistook a new eevee plush as a toy for his joy. I was bummed, but this community came up with some cute ideas to fix it. My execution is not perfect, and there’s some staining from dirt, but I think it turned out pretty okay. Thank you for all of your help!

I have a side hustle in my neighborhood (except not, because I don’t get paid) where I post on the local Facebook page and do minor repairs on folks’ knit and crochet items for free. A woman asked me to repair this blanket as a surprise for her husband, whose late grandmother had knit it for him.

Although I don’t ask for payment I do occasionally get gifts in exchange, and this blanket got me a bottle of wine! If you have the inclination offering minor mending services for folks isn’t a bad way to help develop local community.

It's not perfect but I never did this before so I'm very proud of myself

Jacket with AFC Richmond logo

I did the other side, too. It’s nice to not have it snag on things like door handles as easily anymore, and I managed to weave in most of the ends

Not the prettiest but good enough to double-layer!

1/4” OD by 1/2” wide chicago screws and washers if needed. Try finding flat ones if you can for comfort. Is it stupid to fix probably but it’s working for now. Let me know if this helps at all

Follow up to this post - ultimately I drew up some diagrams of how the knit works and reverse engineered it (like I did for other parts of the jumper), and solved the issue of working towards the edge into nothing by anchoring stitches around a toothpick. Don’t have the spoons to do a full tutorial right now but I’ll try to put one together because it was not too difficult once I’d figured it out! Thought I took pics of the mend in progress with the toothpicks in but apparently forgot to - basically, when I hit the area where the knit was completely worn away, I put a toothpick through the legs of existing stitches on one side of the gap, through both the row I was working into and the row directly beneath, spanned the gap, and then picked up the stitches on the other side again, making sure i picked up the where the row continued. Then I worked around the toothpick, and when I’d worked into all of the new loops on that row, I took out the top pick and moved it to the next row down. Will try to put together instructions at some point!

With sashiko-style stitches

My favorite chair broke and I fixed it in this ungodly way 😭 it ain’t pretty but it works!

The beadwork patches on this pair of shoes had come unglued long ago and I was originally going to try to re-bead them but I recently acquired acrylic paint markers and they worked really well - quick and cute fix, plus I can paint over it if it gets worn or I want to change the style!

While not the most beautiful repair, it was extremely effective and the repair has been going strong for about 2 months now.

Just followed the path and used a bit of rainbow yarn to patch the ripped bit. Unfortunately, the entire blanket was tied and then cut with super short tails, so I'm going to have to put fray check on those bits. But hey, nothing like a good deal and a good mend!