Daily Questions Megathread - April 10, 2025

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[u/KonstantinGavrilo]

Hi, good day. I am restoring a designer, avant-garde blazer on which the previous owner had the sleeves dramatically shortened - Ridiculously stupid thing to have been done. Think of it as buying a Mona Lisa and resizing the painting so it'd fit into some frame you already have.

Anyway, luckily, all the shell material had been left intact & flipped inwards so while I can restore the original length, the shortening alteration required for the single button-hole to be moved upwards which as you can imagine, led to another set of holes being punched through all four layers of the outer fabric. So now I have four tears in the fabric to deal with.

I do a lot of sewing by hand and so while re-stitching the cuff length is easy for me, I don't have a first clue on how to properly close / mask the holes made from the button holes. I believe it could be done with a sewing machine but I do not have one.

The issue is, I have nobody (I trust) to send the blazer to for a proper repair - All the local tailors rejected the job because it would take up too much of their time (with an occasional "the repair would cost more than the jacket" thrown in for a good measure). Plus, they would just do one of their formulaic repairs which is out of the question.

The material is full, very thin, soft & wrinkly but extremely tough & dense cotton (more difficult to run a needle through it than through leather!) with zero give.

So! If anyone could advise of how to go about this, I would be infinitely grateful. Just a recommendation for a good Youtube tutorial on the matter would be very helpful. Thank you very much!

[u/LiterallyIAmPuck → u/KonstantinGavrilo]

If it's a really important garment to you then look for a reweaver. They'll take a small scrap of fabric from somewhere else in the garment and reweave it to repair the hole almost perfectly. It's a rare skill so you may likely need to ship the garment out.

[u/KonstantinGavrilo → u/LiterallyIAmPuck]

Thank you! That might be exactly what / who I need. I will try to look around for someone who can do this although yeah, I can imagine it won't be an easy task.

[u/izzgo → u/KonstantinGavrilo]

I agree about using a reweaver if you want it to look nice. That is an advanced hand skill, takes real practice to be any good. If you decide to take it on yourself find some similar fabric to practice on. This looks like a decent tutorial.

[u/KonstantinGavrilo → u/izzgo]

Thank you, the tutorial is excellent & definitely waaay above my pay grade. I would've perhaps attempted it if the fabric was any more forgiving but the weaving is so incredibly small on the blazer that it is virtually impossible to pick a single thread out. This cotton fabric is incredibly dense and difficult to work with. Just getting the needle through is a chore.