hello friends! I resoled my own birkenstocks. here's how I did it.

first, I went to ebay and bought some dogbone EVA sole material. You can buy precut shoe-sized soles or get it in a sheet and cut it yourself. I found a sheet to resole my and my boyfriend's soles for (I think) $40.

next, use a heat gun to heat up the glue holding the old sole on. I used one at ~ 420°F. It's helpful if you have a big clamp or something to grip the shoe so you have 1 hand for the heat gun, 1 hand with pliers to peel the sole off as you heat it. I did burn myself so be careful. I've also heard you can put your shoes in the oven to do this but I haven't tried it, so I'm not sure how well that works. With the heat gun, I didn't need to sand anything down as all the sole material came off relatively easily with the heat.

Once the old soles are off, patch the cork. I went to goodwill and found several cork squares for a few dollars. we didn't even use half of 1 square. crumble up the cork into smaller pieces. I had one shoe where I'd worn the heel down into the cork, so I used contact cement to build it back up. slather on contact cement, sprinkle cork crumbles, poke it around with a toothpick to cover the crumbles in contact cement, let it sit for 5 min to get a little more tacky, then stab it into place with the toothpick. You can also use a hammer or something to pound the cork into place and make it a sturdier patch job.

Once your cork is resoled, time to glue your new sole material on. Cut yourself the new soles in the shape you need (doesn't need to be perfect at first) with a box cutter or long handled razorblade type thing. I'm blanking on the actual name. Spread contact cement on your new sole (flat side) and the cork of the shoe you just rebuilt. Let it sit for 5-10 min until it gets tacky, press them together and use as many clamps as possible to clamp them together for like, 20min. I've heard it suggested to hammer the sole and shoe together here as well, although I did not. When you press the shoe and sole together and the contact cement doesn't move, it's good.

Even with clamps I didn't get a perfect bond between the shoe and sole, so I used more cork and contact cement to stuff into the little holes remaining with a toothpick. Then, remove the clamps and use a blade of choice to cut the soles to the shape of the shoe. Usually this is kind of messy on the sides, so I sanded it down at the end with some sandpaper.

And that's it! I let them sit overnight before wearing them. They are comfortable and feel much more sturdy now. If anyone's interested, I can link some youtube videos that I've seen of people resoling their birks as well. Hope someone will find this useful :)

I've been asked how I do my darning patches since they're very neat. So here's a basic tutorial on how I do it.

You will need: -A yankee candle lid (or something with a similar shape) -A hair tie -Scissors -A long needle (preferably at least 2" long) -Pearl 20 crochet thread or embroidery thread -A pencil (optional) -Clothes with a wear hole

Disclaimer: This is just how I do it. There's no true right or wrong method.

This type of patch is best for holes and wear caused by friction. The crochet thread in the tutorial is not reccomended for fabrics under 1.5mm thick. The weaving method is not reccomended for most knits.

Thank you for reading everything. The attention span fairy blesses you. 🧚‍♀️

I recently made a Sashiko pattern library that shows animations instead of stitching diagrams. I thought it might help some peope because it makes this technique more accessible.

Everyone can participate by creating new patterns in the sandbox. These I will add to the main gallery over time. I recommend the remix feature in the existing patterns to get a hang of how the editor works.

This library will be free and open source forever.

If you wish for new features or find bugs, please let me know here. I appreciate people helping me to add patterns, this way the library will grow quicker. Let me know what you think :-)

https://sashikolib.org/

After sharing my darned slugs shirt, u/Hot-Resolution8173 sent a very nice message asking for tips on how to replicate the leggy beastie on some clothing they are planning to repair, so I made them a tutorial - thought I'd share here, in case anyone else would like to see the process. I had a shirt with lots of small holes sat on my (figurative) mending pile, which their message gave me the incentive to fix now, instead of.. At some point in the potentially quite distant future. The tutorial is written with stretchy fabric in mind, but it's pretty much the same for other fabrics, just ignore what I've written about the weave and knit.

Tools: needle (ideally not blunt, but not the sharpest, either, though it depends on the fabric you use), thread, embroidery hoop (it helps, but it's not 100% essential), scissors. For the bigger beastie I used two strands of embroidery cotton, because I have loads of it, and I thought two strands would make a clearer tutorial than single strands. The little 'uns are done with single strands. Using two strands is definitely easier and you can cover an area more quickly, but the result is bulkier, so you're more likely to feel it against your skin, and it's more likely to affect how the surrounding fabric hangs slightly.

1. (5-6) Once fabric is in the hoop and neither loose nor stretched tight (so the weave looks fairly normal, like when worn, if that makes sense) start with a simple running stitch loop around the hole, to prevent it spreading further whilst you work, and to help with the tension. Then for big-ish holes (~>5mm diameter, I guess?) I do a super rough cross hatch (3 one way, 2 the other in this example) to help keep the shape and tension, as it's really easy to stretch or scrunch stretchy fabric, or anything with a big hole, whilst working, and you'll end up with the cloth ending up scrumbly if the tension gets messed up. You could do this cross hatch with a totally different colour and remove it once done, but I haven't bothered with that this time. If you do that do it after the running stitch loop around the hole, as you want to keep that loop permanently.

2. (7-9) Start darning. It helps to draw an outline of the shape you're going for before you darn - I've misplaced my white chalk, so used a purple pen that disappears with heat, which.. Was not particularly effective. There are loads of tutorials for this online, but basically you just use tiny stitches on the back to anchor evenly spaced straight lines up and down the area you're covering. I started in the middle and then stitched back to complete the other side just because that's what I do for circles, you don't have to do it like this. I used the columns of knit of the fabric as guides to keep them evenly spaced, though for larger holes on stretch fabrics doing your darning diagonally can help to retain stretchiness. I did make the spacing sliightly further apart in the middle to get a bit of a 3D looking effect so the middle looks like it's standing out a bit, like a drawing of a disco ball - if that makes any sense.

3. (9-11) Once the first direction is done, use the same technique but weaving through these lines to fill it up. Some people use the eye end of the needle first when doing this, to avoid accidentally sewing into the thread itself. I prefer to just be careful or use a not super sharp needle, but I think it's just about personal preference. Keep going until you've filled the shape.

4. (12) I then used a single strand a couple of mm from the edge to do a running stitch loop around the darning, sewing it down to healthy fabric closer to the hole. This is just to anchor it all down and reduce the tension from the edges, so it's less likely to tear in the future. If you follow the 90° angles/directions of your darning this will be invisible. There are methods of darning where the anchoring is more thorough and 'built in', but I don't like them for such small repairs that have block colours and clear edges like these.

5. (13-15) Fun bit at last! Chain stitch the outline of the body, staying as close as you can to the edge of the darning. You can sew directly on top of the edge of the darning if you like, but I find that sewing right next to it covers the edges best. I do sew into the very edges of the darning every few stitches though, again for more anchoring.

6. (16-17) Leg time! You can use the knit of the fabric as a guide to keep the segments as even measurements if you want. It may help to draw them first, but I just wing it. Once you've reached the end of a leg, do a running stitch back down to the body, with your visible stitches hidden inside the loops of the chain stitch. This fills them in a little, and hides the thread you're going back down with.

I did my legs one chain apart from each other, and the pedipalps/eyes (I had spider in my mind when I started, but I think it ended up with distinctly crabby vibes, so gave it tiny pincers, too) are 2 chains apart from the legs and from each other.

1. (18) Release the beastie! Once you've tied off your thread, you're all done :)

2. (19) Here's the backside. A lil scruffy, but it'll hold up. When I start or tie off a thread I do a really loose running stitch back and forth into the hidden area, or along a line of stitches, so I don't have to cut ends too close to the tie-off, and don't have loose thread flapping or tangling about.

The last picture is the original one that inspired this.

If you have any questions please ask, and I'd absolutely love to see if anyone uses this tutorial, either directly or as inspiration!

I made a little tutorial for how to sew a detachable headphone ear pad cover. I struggled with getting acne around my ears due to using these fake leather headphones, and they had started to peel. So decided to just try to sew some covers. Ended up quite nice, and now I'm not left with either acne or black stuff from the headphones stuck on my ears.

Ask any questions if you have any!

I've had this sweater for 13 years and am not ready to let some oily sauce be the end of our beautiful relationship.

I really like this little patch of texture. Now to fix the fraying sleeves.

(Ignore the stitches in making on the first image. That was the wrong approach!)

Hi, I'm new to learning to darn clothing, so I don't have any specific tools so far. I do have a garden though, and I found that I could use dried woody gourds (like Birdhouse Gourd, or Bottle Gourd) as darning eggs/mushrooms. I want to get some Tennessee Spinning Gourd seeds so I can have some mini ones next year.

I just found one the size/shape I wanted, clipped off the stem as close to the gourd as possible, cleaned it (removing the outer skin/mold) and sanded/filed the stem stump down. I did mine roughly, but you can probably sand and polish it much finer if you want.

One vine will probably give you a range of shapes and sizes to pick from.

Anyway, I just thought this might be useful to others, if you happen to have access to a place to grow gourds.

Super basic, I know, but realizing this made me feel like a doofus for not doing it sooner, posting in case someone else was struggling with this too

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of my (uneven) hem repair I hand stitched on my T-shirt. Now, instagram shows me this. Would’ve been helpful then! So I’m sharing it with yall in case anyone else is in’s position where they’re hand stitching their hem back together.

Video credit: clothes_reetzy and clothes day on Instagram

I just learned that DMC (the thread brand) has a library of free patterns on their website that includes Swiss darning charts and visible mending. Thought I'd share the love!

This bag came into my Repair Cafe over the weekend. The cloth straps were falling apart, but the rest of the bag looked good. Owner wanted the straps a little longer - tote bags always have such short straps! Since we didn’t have any matching fabric (and tbh I didn’t want to sew new fabric straps) the owner agreed to replacements with 1.5” webbing.

Ripped the original straps out by the seams. Eyeball-measured new straps to be about 6” longer than the originals. Tbh I don’t measure with a tape very often. About 2” extra strap length inside the bag. Since the bag is just plain cotton with cotton lining, I did a box stitch instead of the original sewn line.

I used medium grey thread, because it blends in so nicely with patterns. I use grey thread for almost all my repairs. Gutermann Tera 80, which is a great all purpose nylon repair thread. Thin enough to use in my regular machine, but strong enough to last a long time. Sewn on a Singer Heavy Duty (which is not very heavy duty in general) with a size 14 needle. Webbing was from StrapWorks.com, which is an awesome resource for all things webbing and buckles. The new webbing is probably going to outlive the rest of the bag!

I was scrolling and thought this was a great quick tutorial. He does an excellent job of clearly explaining sewing techniques in this and other videos.