Practicing Visible Mending

A good few months ago I made the very first quilt of my adult life. It was a fun procrastination/anxiety project as we were prepping to buy a house and move several hours away from anyone we knew.

This project ended up a little wonky and not exactly the style I wanted it but I still LOVE it. It graces the end of our bed or the back of my office chair every day.

Part of this project was dyeing fabric to use for the back and one of the sections in the quilt top. This dyed fabric is my favorite part of the quilt and just after moving in, our cat/resident monster Jack, sliced through the fabric dead center on the top of the quilt. There was no way that I could patch it in a way that would be seamless and invisible because of the dye pattern so there was really nothing else to do but make the patch visible and part of the quilt top.

I'm super inspired by visible mending techniques like sashiko mending. Although this is in no way a sashiko design, I'm excited that mending is becoming more and more popular. 

In honor of Jack's quilt ripping adventure I decided to mend the hole with a cat paw print embroidery. Will it be a weird floating cat print in the middle of the quilt? Yes. Does it fit the weird vibe of this quilt anyway? Also yes. 

Using a water erasable marker I drew a cat print around the damage. If I were to do this again I would make the cat print a little bigger to give the rip a little more breathing room.

From there I picked out a coral embroidery floss to match but stand out on this section of fabric and got to work! I decided on a satin stitch to make a hefty patch that wouldn't let the rip get worse from being at all exposed. 

Satin stitch isn't my go-to and I'm certainly in need of more practice but I love how the little wonky cat paw matches the rest of this weird quilt.