Repairing the Prodigal Surcoat

 My first task was applique repair. Here is a good example of a stripe that needed help. The linen has disintegrated in bits and the applique is peeling up. Some of the stitching has pulled loose. It is a very sad little halberd stripe.


 First, I ironed down the stripes and even sneaked a little bit of Wonder Under in bits that were completely pulled off. I stitched the stripe back down on the edges and added some darning stitches to keep ruffled bits tacked down. After lots of darning stitches and some more ironing, it's starting to look much better. There are still some little naked white spots where the black fabric is gone.



Here is where I must confess that I pulled out the Sharpie laundry marker in black and just fixed the problem with a marker. It looks much better now though.  I went through and fixed all the other applique bits and most of them were much easier that this stripe.  There were a few spots where yellow fabric was gone so I had to do some extra darning and extend the applique stitch line into the halberds.  

Once the applique was all fixed, I then started patching holes.  I still have fabric left over that matches the original, so I had plenty for tiny patch pieces.  There were a lot of holes that needed mending.  After finishing all the holes that were big enough to require patches, I put the surcoat in for a good soak for some stain removal.

 

This is the surcoat after soaking for 6 hours in oxyclean.  The water is really, really gross.  I threw in a dye catcher to try to get some of the dinge out and hopefully pick up some of the armor grunge and leather dye.  The dye catcher worked surprisingly well and is the dark gray blob at the top of the bucket.  That dark gray absorbed a lot of color floating around in the dirty water.