I’m working on a coat refashion at the moment (the one I bought from The Fara Workshop) and when I looked closely I realised it had a few holes in it. I think they might be moth holes, but some of them could be from wear – the original hem was quite holey and falling apart. Having ‘fixed’ some of these holes, I thought I’d share the technique I found in case it was useful to anyone else.

Here is one of the holes:
You go to the back of the fabric (obvs) and you’ll need some bondaweb and a small scrap of the same fabric (which you can cut from a seam allowance if you’re not refashioning a coat). I also lined the hole with interfacing, as I thought this might stop the hole getting worse – you can skip the interfacing step if you want to. (The part of the fabric I was fixing already had interfacing on the back, but I wanted to add more as the hole had been made through the original interfacing.)

The you put the bondaweb around the hole, getting as close to the hole as possible – my strips here are a little big to be honest! Just lay the bondaweb on and then use the steam setting of your iron, hover it over the bondaweb until it melts and then press on the piece of matching fabric, right side down – making sure you don’t burn your fingers!

The piece of fabric I cut, below, was really a bit big, especially for the weight of fabric! Also, this looks like it’s wrong side down, but the square doesn’t have interfacing on it and both sides of the fabric are pretty much the same.

Because my fabric was quite heavy, and I stupidly cut the pieces a bit big, I decided to do some little slip stitches around the edge to really make sure the patches weren’t going to fall off. I did this also because my bondaweb was pretty old and I think a little past its best!

This is what it looks like from the right side now – you can still just about make out the hole, but it’s nowhere near as obvious.

One of the sleeves was the worst for the holes and here it is after they’ve all been patched – there are 3 holes here. There’s quite a big hole in the bottom right corner, which I think it just about the limit of what you can fix with this technique – it might even be beyond the limit! It helps that this fabric is fairly dark and patterned, so the patches do manage to slightly blend in.

Do you have any tips or tricks for rejuvenating clothes that might be a little past their best?