Mending Monday - Holy Sheets

I've been doing a lot of mending lately. This was always one of those simple chores that I would put off for a long time, letting a large pile accumulate before I finally bit the bullet and took care of a few things. I feel like this is something most people are guilty of nowadays, either they let the ripped items sit and collect dust or they just throw them away, neither of which is a good thing. I'm really trying to not be as big a part of our disposable culture, and one way I can do that is by fixing the things I already have. Recently, I've started to take the initiative and really make some progress on my mending. Instead of writing one big post with bunches of mending jobs all in one (like my first mending post), I'm going to try to make it a weekly post. I'm hoping that this will help others to see how easy these little fixes are and how they can save your item from the trash.

So, I'll start things off with our sheets. I just bought these sheets a couple of months ago and I LOVE them. They are the Threshold Performance Sheets from Target and I got this set on clearance because someone ordered them online and returned them. This is seriously the only way to get California King anything at Target. Anyway, these sheets are light enough, soft, smooth, etc. - plus they have the most awesome elastic edges with tags that say (Top or Bottom) and (Side) so you know the orientation. It may sound silly, but this is like a lifesaver with these babies and it makes them so that they always fit perfect.

Anyway, so we have a problem with tearing sheets, or should I say my husband does. He has the feet of a grizzly bear. He has torn every fitted sheet we've had in the time we've been married, cheap or expensive they all rip where his feet go. So when I was folding the sheets and noticed a hole where his feet go, I was sad but not surprised. I really wish I had taken a before picture. It was about 1.5" across and frayed threads were sticking straight up no matter which way you smoothed them. So I decided to fix them.

First, I cut a scrap piece of fusible interfacing and ironed it on behind the hole. Then I went to the sewing machine. I switched to my handy darning/embroidery foot, lowered the feed dogs and started stitching - free motion style! This is really fun if you've never tried it before. You machine give no tension to the fabric with the feed dogs down, so you control your tension and direction with your hands as you sew. I started by going in a vertical-ish motion, zig-zagging up and down until all the frayed area was caught in the threads. Then I started moving the fabric horizontally to basically lock down the other stitches. I stitched and stitched until the hole was completely covered and secured. This is what it looked like after:

And here is a shot of the back with that interfacing:

I'm sure the interfacing won't last forever and will break down with washes, but I can always stock a new piece on there. The interfacing was a vital step in this because it gave the sheet more stability when I darned it, so don't skip this step! I know that close up looks pretty conspicuous, but take a look when it's zoomed out:

You can't even see it! Seriously, once I was finished, I kept losing the spot with the repair. I would have to flip the sheet over to find the interfacing to locate the mended section. I call that a good fix :) And it was a little thicker just on the spot from all the threads, but you really don't feel it when you're sleeping at all. Plus I'm sure that a few washes will soften it up.

So that's my little sheet repair :) It took me about 15 minutes total and now I know I don't have to worry about these sheets eventually ripping completely across like all the others. That's it for this Mending Monday, but I already have the next few weeks posts lined up so check back next week!