Customer Reviews

Singer Simple Mending & Repair: Essential Machine-Side Tips and Techniques

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers the topic of repairs in a very thorough and easy-to-follow repair. The simple drawings are very clear and easy to understand, and I would recommend this book to any beginning seamster who wants to know more about repairing and extending the life of clothing, fabric home decor items. An excellent way to help our culture get away from our throw-away tendencies. It's also probably more useful to those of us who are somewhat less experienced in sewing, though it might be helpful and give ideas even to those who DO know what they are doing already.

My only negative is the format: It's a semi-hardbound book, with a cardboard cover, and spiral binding, and that's all fine. However the pages are oriented along the long axis (landscape) so you have the spiral binding going side to side, rather than up and down, and when you go to turn the page, you reach down to the bottom page, and flip it up, rather like a calendar. I would have preferred the pages have been oriented in the normal way.

I wanted a book just on mending and repair, and my main interest is outdoor clothing and equipment. This one fits the bill for general repair. The outdoor goods repair isn't specifically covered, but the excellent illustrations are helpful in adopting the methods to outdoor repairs.

This is exactly what I wanted. It's a reference guide that is comprehensive for sewing machine repair/mending how-to's, but also much more... it has hand sewing mending techniques, finishing techniques, and some other basic sewing techniques not related to repairs. I've run to it several times in the past months since receiving it and have always been rewarded with clearly described and illustrated instructions (I'd say it's more than "tips and techniques"; it's full step-by-step how-to's). I also looked up a couple things I knew how to do without a book, and on almost all of them this guide either has a better technique than what I knew (it often has 2 or 3 suggestions) or else describes it so clearly, I would use it to teach someone else rather than try to explain myself.

I've used it for:

* darning knit fabrics

* fusible interfacing

* repairing torn button hole

* choosing replacement buttons

* fixing frayed buttonholes

* "when it's too loose"

* fixing a torn hem

* repairing hems by machine

* making a simple hem

* lengthening at the hem

* camouflaging flaws

* fixing ironing accidents

The only "con," but I suspect this is just my copy, is that one page from the index is missing and the next page duplicated instead, which is frustrating when I want to look up how to do something that starts with I-O! Otherwise the index is quite comprehensive and a useful quick reference.