This winter I’ve signed up for one of Earthand Gleaners Society’s on-line sessions. This one is a loosely structured, once a week mending circle. Like a stitch and bitch, but instead of moaning about boy troubles, we chat about upending the status quo / patriarchy. Oh, wait, same-same.
In bygone times we would have been gathered around the firelight in the kitchen darning socks, instead we are gathered on the backlight screen via Zoom. Each of us has an array of different mending projects we are working on, and we go round in a show and tell to start the meeting off. It’s been a great group to both learn from and give encouragement to. While many (myself included) are more beginners/dabblers, some are extremely experienced sewers. I’m in awe of Heather Cameron’s dedication to mending, and her level of expertise.
So far I’ve learned tips such as:
If you don’t have a darning mushroom, you can use a soup ladle or a lightbulb.
Got a stain or a hole? You can embroider a fun shape over it. AKA visible mending.
If visible mending isn’t your thing, you can match threads and sort of re-weave the fabric in a kind of mini-loom style of repair, in an attempt at something closer to invisible mending.
A lot of the conversation has revolved around the glut of cheap clothes and fast fashion in general. It’s insane that “fashion and its supply chain is the third largest polluting industry, after food and construction”.
When you do actually get your hands on a good quality garment that needs repairs, it can be difficult to know how best to do it. There seems to be a dearth of knowledge around how to care for good fabrics—including mending skills—but the hunger to learn is there. One of the questions that has arisen is how do we match these skill holders with people who want to learn?
Another topic that has come up; When you have a clothing item that you’ve mended, re-mended, and re-re-mended—how do you know when it’s time to just… let it go?
Which brings me to my former favourite linen shirt. Oh, how I loved this shirt. Pick nearly any photo of me in the summers between 2018 and 2021, I am wearing this shirt as a top layer. At first it started tearing where I put my thumbs through to pull the shirt on. Then the shoulders seams started to go. Finally, when the fabric in the armpits actually looked like it was disintegrating, I felt it was time to let it go. I mean, I still have it (of course I do), but I don’t wear it anymore.
I’m actually thinking of cutting out and re-working some of the repair work into a whole new layered & stitched art piece. Because look at all that work! I love how I took an already pre-embroidered piece of vintage linen and worked it into the repairs. I love how I was practicing my newly learned embroidery stitches up on the shoulders. I love the look of the verso inside (centre image below) just as much as the outer facing work.
I didn’t know much about linen when I bought this shirt, I just knew that linen was a lovely, breathable, natural material and I was starting to have hot flashes. Clearly time to gently ease into my linen-lady years. I loved how light and airy the shirt was, but I realize now this contributed to quicker wearing out of the fabric. I’ve since learned a bit about modern linen production. Turns out, it’s in a bit of a crisis.
Is there any point in mending when a new hole opens up right next to the mended section? Hey, maybe there’s a metaphor here after all.
*UPDATE
Now that a few weeks have gone by since I wrote this, I’ve been encouraged to actually pick up my hole-y linen shirt again and give the mending another go. Partly inspired by the new found skills and courage gained in the on-line mending group, but also partly inspired by our fearless leader’s pants.
Sharon Kallis has a pair of linen Thai wrap pants that she has been mending and wearing for about 10 years. After 10 years, you can imagine they are made more of the mends than of the original fabric; more stitched art than plain garment. A statement piece, to be sure, but also a kind of soft manifesto.
Over the weeks the mending group met, I learned that to mend a piece of clothing is to get intimate with a garment in a way we can’t do just by wearing it. We may sigh with comfort when putting on our coziest sweater, but to mend it is to get up close and personal with its very construction, stitch by stitch. One realizes quite quickly that, although many fashion processes are machine-made, it was human hands that last held and finished your garment. There is no such thing as a magic “sweater machine”.
A stranger might look at Sharon’s pants and think them a quirky style statement, but they are so much more. The pants speak volumes about her personal values and the economics she embraces.
If you are eager to learn more about mending but don’t know where to start, here’s a list of resources from a recent article on the wonderful
For me, one of the reasons I choose continually mending over making a new one is that in mending, the shape is already there. I don’t have to measure as I make, see if it fits. So it’s stress-free, relaxing.
And it’s the comparison with making a new one, rather than buying a new one, that makes all the difference.
Thanks for the mention!