This is part 4 in the Prepper Kit series. If you want to catch the others you can find them here:
10 Kits to Put Together Today to Be Ready for Tomorrow
Kit #1 – Providing Your Family with Light
Kit #2 – The Kit Your Family Needs This Winter
If I use the words “grid-down situation,” what are the first thoughts that pop into your mind? It is protecting your house, working on growing your own livestock and keeping them away from other people? Is it tending a garden and canning its produce? In the midst of the things that flash across your mind, somehow I don’t think repairing damaged clothes or sewing on buttons or patching up worn blue jeans would make even the top 100, but in reality, mending clothes and keeping them in good repair is very important. It’s not like you can run to Kohl’s or Wal-Mart or even Goodwill if commerce as we now know it ceases.
While we don’t need to keep up appearances if life, as we knew it, is no longer happening, but torn clothes can cause other problems. Tears get caught on bushes, fences, and anything else that you can imagine up. This could trip you up literally and potentially even create a dangerous situation if you were on the chase or you were running from someone.
Unmended clothes or other people’s cast-off clothes that don’t fit you properly (think too long) can create different issues. If you roll up the pants, they may not stay rolled up and you could trip and hurt yourself. You could get your other shoe caught in the cuff of its opposite leg.
And if you, like everyone else, are losing weight, you should be able to take your clothes in so that they don’t fall off your backside. I could go on and on and on about why it’s important to put together a clothing repair kit, but I’m going to leave it there and head on to what you should have in your kit.
Sewing needles
Sewing needles are the backbone of your kit. Make sure you have a lot of them in different varieties. You should have small ones for more delicate work. Larger ones can be used on thicker fabrics like denim or duck fabric. Curved needles can be used to repair shoes in some cases or furniture. This set has 30 needles and 3 needle threaders.
Thread 
Even if you don’t have a sewing machine, you will need thread if you are going to do any clothing repair. I highly recommend that you pick up a minimum of 5 spools of black, white, navy blue, and brown. Once you have those, pick up the colors of many of your clothes. Or you could buy several different colors of thread in a pack.
Sewing Machine
Why should you have a sewing machine if you might now have power? First off, you don’t know that you won’t have power. Secondly, sewing machines still work if you don’t have power, they’ll just take a lot of turning the crank by hand, or if you are lucky enough to have an “Iron Lady” aka treadle, then you can still sew if you’ve been keeping her maintained.
Personally, on my (eventual) wishlist is this machine on the left. It combines the abilities of a more modern sewing machine with the treadle base.
Sewing machine needles
If you’ve got a sewing machine, you will NEED needles. They will wear out and break. You may try sewing too many layers of fabric, and one will break. You may forget to take a pin out of your material, the needle will hit one, and it will break. Do yourself and everyone else a favor and have 15-20 sewing machine needles on hand. They aren’t incredibly expensive.
Bobbins
No matter whether you have an “Iron Lady” or a modern sewing machine. You will need bobbins to sew.
Pins 
Sometimes you just need to hold your fabric together while you are getting into position to sew. Pins will keep things in place until you can get things sewn together.
Scissors
Whether it’s cutting thread, fabric or patches, elastic or anything else related to clothing repair, you need a good pair of DEDICATED sewing scissors. If you use sewing scissors on other items like paper or harder items, it will dull the scissors so they will not cut fabrics like you need them to.
Seam ripper
If you’re sewing torn seams why in the world do you need a seam ripper? Well sometimes in order to repair a seem, you need to remove more of that seam or part of another seem. Having a seam ripper makes the job so much faster! I’ve had more seam rippers than I can count over the years, but this one has been my favorite.
Fabric
If you sew at all or you have someone in your family that sews, you need to keep some fabric on hand. And two of the types of fabric that everyone should have on hand are denim and cotton. Denim is sturdy and cotton breathes well. Make sure if you buy lengths of these fabrics that you wash them when you get them. If you don’t the first time that you wash them after you construct your garment, they will both shrink.
Velcro
Velcro has so many uses. In a pinch, you could use velcro on clothes or repair velcro shoes if you have velcro on hand. It could also be used on garments in various situations. Get creative, but you won’t regret having it.
Buttons 
Buttons get caught, fall off, get ripped off, or break. It’s a fact of life. Make sure that you have many different kinds and sizes of buttons on hand. Grandmothers used to keep a jar with buttons in it. These were buttons from ruined clothes or buttons from someone’s cast-offs. You can buy large allotments of buttons on Amazon for more than reasonable prices. One or two of these should have you set for a while.
What to Do if you Don’t Sew
I can hear some of you now though. Karen, I don’t sew? The only ‘sewing’ I do is with a staple gun. How in the world can I repair clothes? Don’t you worry, I’ve got you covered (pun so intended).
Patches
Sometimes there are areas that you just can’t put a seam and stitch it up (think of little boys knees). Sometimes, you just need to patch the garment. Patches are a wonderful way for you to take care of a tear in an area like that.
Iron (including old-fashioned iron)
Why do you need an iron if you aren’t worried about keeping up appearances? You apply patches using an iron. So while having an electric iron could be helpful, you should also have an old-fashioned iron and a tea towel. If you ever need to use an old-fashioned iron, sprinkle or spray a small amount of water on the garment which you are going to iron. Then cover the item with a tea towel and use the old-fashioned iron over the tea towel. It will keep your clothes from getting singed until you get the hang of heating the iron on the stove or fire until it gets to a certain temperature.
No-sew hemming tape
Okay for those of you who just couldn’t knot a piece of thread to save your life, this might be the direction that you want to go. There is something called no-sew hemming tape that you can use to fuse two pieces of fabric together. This won’t hold nearly as well as a seam, but it will hold for a while.
Snaps
Snaps are a simple way of closing a garment. What’s more, they don’t have to be sewn on! You buy a nifty little gadget which will insert your snaps onto your garments. If you can’t sew a button hole, snaps, while they will come undone more quickly than buttonholes, can still help keep garments closed.
What Should You Do Now?
Grab some of the things you have now and put them together in one central location. Mark its location on an app on your phone. If you really have nothing from this category, here is an awesome resource which will provide you with much of what you need for clothing repair in one handy case.
What About You?
Do you have a basic clothing repair kit put together? What else would you include in the kit? I’d love to hear. Leave a comment below and let us know.
Together lets Love, Learn, Practice, Overcome
There are links in this post. Some of the links may be affiliate links. Some of the links may not be. My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. These are the items that I have bought for my own family. You can feel free to use my affiliate links, of which I will get a small amount in compensation, or you can choose to search out your products on your own.
I don’t worry about all different sizes of needles as I find myself choosing the same one every time. i prefer all cotton thread of a good brand (NOT the $ .99 kind) I never found needle threaders all that helpful; that’s what kids are for. I hear there are new versions of treadle machines being made tho I’m sure they are out of my price range. Some of the old ones take a shuttle rather than a bobbin & those are hard to come by. I heartily applaud your direction to buy more fabric & more buttons! Now I can claim them as preps. Thanks for an article on a subject I haven’t seen addressed before.
I DO sew at a professional level and to all those who say, “But I don’t know how!!” I would say if you are a prepper, teaching yourself the basics falls under those important life skills. Preppers are frugal – if we can come up with 100 uses for a toothpick and we can rig a shelter out of a tarp and a few bungee cords, it’s a little silly to be willing to throw away an otherwise good shirt simply because you can’t sew your button back on. Mastering how to tie a knot on thread, doing a quick whipstitch, and learning to sew a button on are just basic skills that can save you a lot if the clothing situation gets dire. Plus basic handsweing also applies to medicine – if you can whiptstitch a hole in your pants shut, you can whipstitch a gash in someone’s arm in a bind, too.
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