Karen Nicol's Exquisite Flower

Look at this! Well what do you expect from Karen Nicol? She is the best of the best, so this, her first deliberate Visible Mend, was bound to be special. The dress is a sweet early-1960s wool shift with a windowpane check and a yellow stripe, which had a moth hole in an awkwardly, as Karen said, crotch-adjacent position. She solved the dilemma by embroidering flowers all over the area, thus improving the dress several hundred percent.

The technique is brilliant: she claims it's easy but I think you have to be her. She lays down filaments of gauze, then free-embroiders the leaves, all with her vintage industrial free-arm Singer. Basically: good luck. Better have Karen do it for you, like we did. (Until we've figured out the form to order a mend, email if you want to commission.)

Techniques and Materials

Gauze

Free arm machine embroidery

Appliqué

Genius