Removing grommets?

[Adriana Rose]

I have been hacking away at a bodice and this time it did not fail horribly! ( yay) so in a fit of cheapness I desided to grommet it my self. But I only had enough grommets to do about a 3rd of the ones I needed. And my grommter ( see cheapie from wally world) worked only on about half of them and mangled the rest.

Now to the question.

How in the world can I take them out with out mangling the fabric? So I can take it to the shoe reapair guy to get it done right.

[tcindie]

You could do what I did on my doublet, just use some embroidery floss and encase the grommets in that, it hides whatever messy looking grommets you may have ended up with, and gives the piece a nice finished look.  Not too difficult to do, just takes a while ...

As for removing grommets, I would think that you could probably use a pliers to crush one side so it's small enough to fit through the hole and then just pop them out.

[Lady Kathleen of Olmsted]

When I was redoing an ensemble from an ebay vendor in 2007, the grommets I needed to remove popped right out using a pair of Needle Nose pliers.

Because I do a lot of Corsets and bodices that are thick layered, I take all that to my local Shoe Repair guy. He does such a  wonderful job. The grommets he uses come from Ohio Travel Bag out of Ohio. I have never had a grommet pop out in 7 years I have been going to him.

Good Luck

[Adriana Rose]

Yea my shoe guy rocks for that too but I jumped the gun and now I have to yank the buggers out..

*grumble*

[GirlChris]

The first time I used grommets, I actually set them fairly well. But I ended up taking them out anyway because I hadn't put in any boning to offset the lacing wrinkly-ness. I cut them with tin snips (very carefully, both for the sake of the fabric and for my fingers!), then bent and folded them until they let go.

[Lady L]

I have been able to pry them off with a pliers. Then, as I stated a few days ago, hand sew around the hole, pulling the fabric in a bit. I used locktite glue to keep the fabric from fraying. Then iron on squares of interfacing, where the new grommets will go. Helps to stablize it a bit more. Hope you are able to save it.

[Adriana Rose]

I got them out and the bodice is at the shoe repair, he called to tell me it was done and I missed him by 15 minutes!

[Katie Bookwench]

If you feel you've compromised the outer fabric once you've gotten the grommets out, you may want to sew a strip of bias or twill tape along the line the grommets will go in, to cover any holes, and contain any raveling of the fashion fabric. 

I've seen this done before, and it makes a neat design element.

See... we don't call them MISTAKES... we call them DESIGN ELEMENTS, or OPPORTUNITIES FOR (ADDITIONAL) TRIM. 

[Adriana Rose]

They all came out very well and since the shoe repair guy was going to use slightly bigger grommets that should shore the holes up.

I donno yet because I am never in town before he closes! The aticipation is killing me!