Soft Toy Repairs - Fabric Damage (Non furry fabrics)

Soft Toy Repairs - Fabric Damage (Non furry fabrics)

Dear treasured dear friends and family of the soft toy hospital :3

Thank you for staying with us all this while. :3

Today let us talk about another common soft toy repair concern, Fabric Damage (Non Furry Fabrics)!

We will be covering furry fabric damages in a separate post because they are a completely different category :3

Read about nose repairs here

But for today, let us talk about the soft toys repairs with non furry fabrics! Let's go.

What are non furry fabrics and where are they found?

Non furry fabrics are generally made of cotton, polyester or a cotton/polyester blend. Though the ones most commonly found in soft toy repair; made into blankies, blankets, bususk busuks, chou chous, blosters and pillows are generally patterned cotton fabrics.

Figure: Pure cotton fabrics (non furry) displayed in a children blankie

Figure: Cotton Pillows

Occasionally, printed fabrics may also be added into standard soft toys to give it a characteristic fabric look, better texture and/or coloration :3

Figure: Petals made with both minky (furry) and cotton (non furry and patterned)

The degradation. What happened?

This fabric type is made by weaving rows of yarns perpendicular to each other. And the prints are usually yarn dyed (means the yarns are dyed before weaving) or dyed / printed after weaving.

This results in the following types of wear and tear

1) Fiber stretch

Over time, use and stretch would gradually cause the fabric fibers to move from their original perpendicular position and they will distort into a new shape as cotton has a minor amount of elasticity and can shift without breaking the fibers.

If fibers do break during the shift, then the shift will be more major and can result in longer stretches far from the original shape

2) Fiber damage

Over time, use and friction may also result in fiber damage where fibers of the cotton starts to fray and break apart. The great thing about cotton is that they do not split apart rapidly on damage and thus is an optimal fabric of choice for high use fabrics.

Figure: Fabric loss and damage due to fiber breakage

3) Print Fade

Print Fading is where the designs on your fabric gets lighter and hazier over time, and can occur due to the following reasons

a) Original print isn't color stabilized. And thus washing of any kind starts degrading the print

b) Sun. Sun is a bleaching agent and can case color fading on the fabric print over time

c) Bleach. Bleach will destroy most prints on fabrics very rapidly

d) Light coloration: a light colored print will be very unresistant to washing of any kind and will fade quickly

If your fabric is experiencing print fade, please do contact us asap with as good a picture of the fabric as possible. We may be able to achieve a reprint for you.

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Now that we know what has happened, let's talk about how to fix it :3

Types of mending: Type 1 Overlay

Overlay, as its name suggests, is laying a new layer of fabric over the old one  :3

Figure: Petals with overlay done

 Pros Cons
Original fabric preserved in best condition underneath Fabric is thicker now (double layer)
Item looks like new but smells like old The feel of the old fabric will be replaced by the feel of the new fabric (on top)
Beautiful finishing, no color difference

 Shape correction is possible with overlay.

Types of mending: Type 2 Underlay

Underlay, as its name suggests, is laying a new layer of fabric under the old one  :3

Figure: New fabric is added and sewn underneath the original layer

 Pros Cons
Original texture and feel of the old fabric is fully preserved

Distinctive color difference between old and new spot if color match isn't exact.

Note however that color matching is near impossible for printed fabrics. We will use a solid print (same base color as the printed fabric) to do the backing. Or we will require a reprint.

But for solid fabrics, a good result is achievable :3

Figure: Poliwagie face with our trademark near invisible stitching.

Types of mending: Type 3 Replacement

If smell isn't a major point of concern, a full replacement can produce the best results with its single layer lightweight texture and a brand new fabric smooth to the touch.

 

Figure: Sunny here with a full fabric replacement :3

All replacements will be made with the exact same cut of the old soft toy. And thus will result in a very similar duplication. All original facial features and limbs will also be reused and only the damaged fabric portions will be replaced.

Types of mending: Type 4 Binding

For the very weak fabrics, an edge binding done by hand would give the greatest amount of protection for frayed edges.

This type of binding also takes the pressure off the original fabric as its backed by a additional layer within to spread out the stress.

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Thank you for staying with us till the end. That is all for this section :3

Do comment down below if there is anything you would like to read about that we haven't spoken about yet.

Till next time! :D

Watch our polliwagie face backing mend below

 

@plushiehospitalsg Face Mend with Poliwagie - Invisible Stitch #refurbishment #plush #poliwag #pokemon #repair ♬ original sound - Ikarus

Watch our long video on Petal's mend below

 

@plushiehospitalsg Plush Restoration - With Petals 🌸 #softtoyrescue #plushrestoration #softtoyrepair ♬ Wes Anderson-esque Cute Acoustic - Kenji Ueda
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