The Sewing Place
The Emporia => Sewing Professionally => Topic started by: Sandra on December 06, 2017, 09:17:01 AM
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This arrived yesterday ...it's a real fur jacket with the most enormous tear on the left front.
(https://i.imgur.com/sl4Tsufl.jpg)
The customer was tearful...it had been her mother's jacket and she desperately wanted it mended, if at all possible. She would like to pass it on to her own daughter.
In total, the tear is 14 inches long, in four lengths...turning right angled corners as it goes. :S
Luckily, the skin was in pretty good condition...(I remember once, trying to repair one which was so thin, it was like trying to stitch single-ply, wet tissue).... so I was able to pull it all back together.
Firstly, I needed to open the lining. This needed to be tackled from the back. There's no chance of stitching it neatly from the outside through all that fur.
(https://i.imgur.com/ivrp7c7l.jpg)
The side seam was opened, and a section undone at the hem....from here I can partly turn the jacket inside-out...
(https://i.imgur.com/MvNuw8Nl.jpg)
That's better...I can see what I'm dealing with now.
Oooooh.....that's a big tear!
Starting from an inside corner of the rip, I simply pulled the two edges back together.
(https://i.imgur.com/ZQry179l.jpg)
Didn't take too long.
All done. I gave it a light brushing (with our cats brush ><)...to free any trapped fur...and the repair is invisible underneath all that.
Hopefully, the lady will be happy it's been mended and it's looking good.
(https://i.imgur.com/qNTosYAl.jpg)
Sandra.
xxx
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Sandra, that is amazing! Your customer will be delighted! You have done a wonderful job, I hope she is suitably appreciative.
A masterclass in repairing a fur coat.
Jessie
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Hmm do you do alterations by post?!
I have two beautiful fur coats with tears. One is at the shoulder and one is on the sleeve. They are both gorgeous jackets and I used to wear them a lot but they've been in storage since the tears got too big.
I've never been able to find anyone to repair them, and I struggled myself.
This is pretty amazing!
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Many years ago I remodelled my Granny's fur coat, I did it much the same way but probably not as neatly, and I did wear it a number of times, though I wouldn't wear a real fur coat now.
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Firstly kudos to you for managing to rescue something so extremely damaged so well and thank you for showing us the steps .. really interesting
but what I really want to know, what I really, really want to know is .....
What the hell happened to cause that much damage?!!!!
BYW a nice leather jacket Imself bought me one Christmas ripped a month ago down from the pocket welt type thing, Can you do anything ???
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I'll let you in to a little secret.....*whispers*...That was a really easy repair but it looks very impressive due to the scale of it.
Any one of you on here could do the same. You can see how I did it.
Fran...the most important thing to check is the quality of the skin.
If your coats have tears similar to the one on this, then just insert a needle (I used a needle specifically for leather) into the edge of the skin and you'll be able to feel if it's deteriorated and brittle/dry/too thin, because the needle will tear away and you'll clearly see you won't be able to do a repair like this one.
Also, if you find there are little bits of the skin torn away and you have a hole?...Sorry...wouldn't know how to advise you on that.
Otherwise Fran... :) Go on...you can do it!
When I left school, back in the 80's, I worked with a lovely lady, Mary, who did these sort of repairs on furs. I can't remember where she'd worked in the past but she always got these jobs to do when they came in the shop.
Some of them were pretty disgusting...proper moth-eaten, with moth eggs and larvae included. ><
I'm OK with a basic repair like this one, but I'm no furrier.
What the hell happened to cause that much damage?!!!!
I'm not sure, but there is a fastener loop missing on that side, somewhere in the middle of that tear. I suspect it must have ripped from that point.
I haven't bothered to do anything with the fasteners. The customer only mentioned the rip, and I don't want to make work for myself which I've not been asked to do.
The hook side of the fasteners all appear to be broken, and there's the one missing on the repaired side.
BYW a nice leather jacket Imself bought me one Christmas ripped a month ago down from the pocket welt type thing, Can you do anything ???
It all depends? Need to see it.
It's probably a 'no' if I would need to get it under the sewing machine at all because I no longer have an industrial, so can't stitch thick leather.
Where I used to work, we used to do 'glue' repairs on some leathers to fix tears...some worked better than others, but as you say it's from a pocket... so I'm not sure if it would hold.
Sandra.
xxx
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I think the leather is too thin for a repair and the rip is not along a seam ... just seems that the welty pockety part tore away from the rest of the jacket .... never mind, it was only a tk maxx job!
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I did have a go fixing one of them. I found that the skin was fairly pliable but the stitching tore through the skin too easily. Possibly I needed to take the needle further on each side of the tear.
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So much depends on the place, the style of the jacket and so on. Sometimes a piece of fabric over the back, quite a lot bigger than the rip, then decorative stitching across the join line, or a decorative patch stitched right through the leather to the fabric, well away from the tear. The end of the pocket is an awkward place to make it look right. Could you put in a small zip so it looks like it is into a second pocket?
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Lovely neat job Sandra... :loveit: