textile repair Archives - Tinking Turtle

An Example of a Great Repair Request

March 16, 2024 by Jennifer Raymond

Have you ever wondered what goes on before I take on a project to repair?

Before I accept an item to fix, I like to have a dialogue with clients about the piece, their goals, and my ability. All of this starts with the Repair Request I have on my Contact Me Page.

So what makes a good repair request? I often have to clarify to potential clients what I need to come up with an accurate estimate to repair the item they’d like me to work on. When you, the client, fills out our contact form, it asks you a series of questions such as:

How important is matching color or matching fiber content?
How important is it to you that the repair be machine washable vs. needing to be washed by hand?
How are you intending to use the item?
How fragile does the fabric appear?
How important to you is cost?
How important is it for you to preserve as much of the textile as possible?

When you answer these questions, they help me understand where your priorities lie in the the repair. Some repairs can be functionally stable, but the color or fiber content might not be the best match. Finding a good color match can be time consuming – are you willing to reimburse me as I purchase different yarns to find the best match for the repair? If you are intending to put the item on display vs use it everyday, that may influence how much of the object needs to be repaired – daily use means I should also prioritize areas I see are going thin, because with more use they may easily become holes soon.

One of the best ways I can get a sense of the item (aside from sending it to me) is to take good photographs. Take a look at the photos below as I show what was really helpful about them.

This is a great overall photo of the piece. I can see the pieces of paper that mark the holes, and I know where the holes are in relation to each other. It gives me a sense of the scale of the piece, the overall pattern, and if there are any edgings or other factors I have to take into account while working.

Great photo with a number. The ruler provides a lot of detail for me: I can tell the size of the yarn and how big the hole is. The hole is filling enough of the frame that I can zoom in to look at how the fibers are worn away (ie: frayed, cut, ragged).

Again, the ruler is super helpful. I can also tell the customer had their hands on either side stretching the fabric slightly so I could see everything.

So helpful to have number 3 and 4, which are close together, numbered! In cases where holes are close together, the location of the holes can impact how I approach the repairs, so it’s helpful to see that relational information.

Here the hole was small enough that I couldn’t see it in the overall picture, but can see it here. It was so helpful!

One of the other things this client did was mark each hole with a piece of string. This really saves both of us time. While sometimes people don’t realize there is a hole that I catch, the time it takes for me to find holes that the client already knows about is time I could use on doing repairs. Ultimately it saves us both time, and in the end, the client money.

Got a piece you’d like me to look at? Now that you have a sense of what I’m looking for, head over to Let’s Connect, and get the conversation started.

Re-Imagining A Crochet Tablecloth

July 1, 2022 by Jennifer Raymond

Getting creative with clients to turn a piece from something that can’t be used to something that can is one of my favorite types of collaborations.

This tablecloth had major damage around various part of the outer edge. However, like many crochet pieces, this one was modular – both in that the motifs used could be pulled out and put other places, and that each round of motifs and edging was not dependent on the last piece.

The first step for me was laying the piece out so I could take a careful look and mark and note the places that needed attention. There’s the obvious two holes along the edge, but there were also multiple smaller places that would need attention and reinforcement too.

The client preferred to be able to use the piece – no matter that we’d have to take off quite a bit of the outer edging. We could then use it as a table runner instead of a table cloth.

After taking a good close look at the piece, and multiple conversations with the client, we determined the place where we could take the least off. I’d still need to repair some small areas, but we had reduced the amount of work to something that was in the client’s budget.

Taking the edging off involved the use of a sharp pair of scissors and some time where I didn’t need to be interrupted. There was no room for mistakes! After several hours of carefully removing the outer edge, it was time to take a step back, take some pictures and consult with the client again.

Here we have the piece with the edging taken off – it really changed the appearance and presentation of the finished product. I think the cleaner unadorned edge gives it a bit more of a formal and modern look.

A quick and light steam press, shoring up some of the other areas, and it was ready to be sent on its way!

2021 Changes and Prices

December 30, 2020 by Jennifer Raymond

This post is going to be a bit of a tone change, but I hope you’ll bear with me. It’s something I’ve been putting off writing about for the past two weeks, as it’s not the fun part of talking about the pieces I get to work on and posting beautiful pictures. Instead, this is more the realm of the business side of Tinking Turtle, which is something I honestly prefer to leave to Mr. Turtle most of the time. But, I’m the owner and face of the business, so this is a decision I need to own up to.

As 2020 draws to a close and we begin a New Year, it’s time for me to take stock of the business and the direction it has been going. We’ve seen some big changes to Tinking Turtle in the last 2 years, as we’ve added to our family and pivoted away from design work to more repair work. It’s been a tough thing for me, as I honestly love designing, but the tight deadlines were killing both our family life and my hands. I’m no longer able to pull an all-nighter to finish a shawl that needs to be sent into the magazine in two days!

Which brings me to the purpose of this post: I’m going to be changing my pricing, and I wanted to share some of the reasons I’ve come to this decision.

What Changed?

The type of work I’ve been doing has been shifting. I’m doing a lot more larger and more complicated and specialized repairs. I’ve built up relationships with other individuals in the knit/crochet industry, and have been happy to pass comission knitting their way when it’s been more standard. But I’m doing more specialty art projects and handling more heavily damaged pieces, and I want my pricing to reflect that I’ve shifted to a much more specialized sort of work.
I‘ve made investments to be able to take on more damaged pieces. Over the past five years I’ve develped a special space to store and process pieces as they come in. I’ve invested in specialized equipment, like the ozone generator to treat pieces damaged by odors, smoke, moths, and other materials. I’ve invested in other behind-the-scenes tools to better protect and preserve the heirlooms I’m working on.
I’ve also made changes to how we handle pieces from a liabality standpoint; with this I am taking on more risk, and hence, have higher insurance prices and other risk mitigating expenses.
My volume of projects has increased! Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m happy about this. BUT! The reality is that knitting, crocheting, seaming, blocking, pinning, etc are all hand and arm heavy activities. I’ve been transparent about how this year I had to have surgery for my wrist. I’m not saying my career was entirely the reason I had to have the surgery, but I have to be careful and take time to stretch and take care of my hands.
I’ve gotten better. As I practice more and learn more, the quality of my finishing and repair has increased, and I believe that my expertise is worth it!

What does this mean for you, the Customer?

Coming January 1st, my prices will be increasing on Finishing & Repair work. My hourly rate will increase from $60 to $70. Many of the categories in my Finishing line of services will also change – some won’t change as much as my hourly rate, and some won’t change at all. But most things will be increasing by a little.
Note: for any of you who have been issued a codeword, as long as you have filled out the customer intake form, you are set! Your projects will be charged under the old system. Unable to fill out the form and get your piece in the mail? Drop me a note and we can work with you.

Got questions about the changes? As always, you can leave me a comment, or drop me an email, and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Thank you so much for being loyal customers!

Challenges in Restoring Crochet Rag Rugs

December 9, 2020 by Jennifer Raymond

Normally I’m all about the yarn, but the most recent repair I’ve been working on is a set of three crochet rag rugs. Restoring these pieces took some real inguenuity and creativity, as I worked with the client to come to a solution. Let’s take a look at these three lovely rag rugs, and how we approached repairing them for further use!

These rugs started out with some pretty significant damage. Because they were made out of rags, some of the more delicate fabrics had worn out quickly, while much of the rug was still in really good shape. I thought when the client first sent picture that the rugs were made out of quilting cotton, but it became apparent once I had a them in my hands that the quilts were made from garments – most notably, men’s button up shirts. [Read more…]

Reweaving and Grafting a Green and Gold Asymetrical Shawl

November 25, 2020 by Jennifer Raymond

It seems like the entire fall has been consumed with white sweaters: I had three repairs of Irish Knit sweaters in a row, which is one of the more boring things to write about. But my latest repair is a lovely green and gold shawl that I thought was paticularly interesting, and I thought I’d share it here in addition to writing about it on Instagram.

This piece had five rows of stitches ripped into a hole: it had caught on something (dryer? door?) and gotten the hole. Being that it was in the colors of the client’s daugther’s team, it needed to be repaired.

This is one of the repairs that is just a joy to work on: the client, D, had sent the piece to me with the loose stitches still on locking stitch markers. She had taken my Darn It class with me at Rhinebeck, so she knew the drill: catch the stitches so they don’t drop and make the hole bigger. It meant I could dive right into the repair without having to fish around ladering the stitches back into place. (Which, have I mentioned lately that my Darn It class is both on Interweave and Craftsy?)

It was time to get to work.

Garter stitch is one of the prime times where I like to use a single long-ish strand of the repair yarn if I can. While many of the orional techniques of doing swiss darning call for a new strand of yarn on each row, I find that leaves a lot of ends to weave in, and can make the fabric very dense in those areas. Trying to keep the ends pretty short, I only opened up the hole a little, working duplicate stitch along the sides and then knitting across the hole before moving up to the next row. I did that for the first few rows, and then grafted the last row together.

Then it was time to weave in the ends.

I feel like often most of the attention I give to pieces is the process of repairing the hole, which is important! But, I find it equally as satisfying to weave in the ends – that’s when a hole is truly repaired. I feel like sometimes garter stitch can be a little tricky to weave in all the ends, so I chose to split the yarn into smaller strands to try and hide the ends a little better and keep the fabric from getting too thick where the old and new yarn overlapped.

Finally, it was time to fuss with the tension to make sure that everything was laying flat and even.

A blast of steam to “convince” the newly woven in ends that they should stay where I put them, and this piece was ready to send in the mail. A satisfying way to leave things!

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