So the idea of elbow patches on the (previously mended, once chopped, heavily worn) sweater we discussed in the last post seems to be quite well received, but some folks had some more specific questions about how I’m actually going to do it.

The short answer is ‘erm, sew some other fabric onto it…like how patches always work?’

But the longer answer is that all mending is always a bit improvisational, because all damage is different, and all mends are specific to the damage they’re addressing. It starts with looking at the thing you’re mending to see where the wear is happening and what sort of damage it’s causing, then assessing what materials and skills you have available, deciding how much time you want to put into the project and what you want it to look like when you’re done, and then seeing how close you can get your work to that imagined goal.

For this, I had the fabric I’d cut off back in October of 2024, and I knew that would be a good fit because it was the same material (the bits I cut off have a moss stitch pattern, while the sweater itself is stockinette, but that’s ok and will look cool). And I wanted to put a patch on both the inside and the outside of both sleeves (because I wear this inside out half the time, and if one elbow is going the other won’t be far behind). So I folded one of the pieces of spare fabric in quarters and made a little template to get a nice big oval, then cut it out of the fabric.

I went with a patch that’s significantly larger than the hole, because the area around the hole is already thin, and this takes the patch all the way out to where the fabric is still sturdy. Next up I’ll use the Gleener to take the fuzzies off both sides of the fabric, pin the two patches in place (one inside one outside), and stitch it all down.

Now, there are other ways I could have mended this! I could have duplicate stitched over the whole area (especially if I’d caught the hole sooner when it was just a thin spot or a tiny hole). I could have done some decorative stitching around the hole to stabilize it and just left it as a hole. I could have knit a little patch right into the sweater. And all those would be totally valid!

But for this case, for this sweater, I figured a little extra elbow padding would be cozy, and I had the material, so this is what I’m doing. Mending is always individual, and always an opportunity to do some creative problem solving. Just experiment, there’s no right or wrong way, if you’re happy with it, you did it right!