I started sewing when I was 11 and at the time I thought mending was boring. New construction fascinated me because it felt like a chance to make something out of nothing – like a blank canvas with endless options. I wanted to make doll clothes and long flowy skirts and corsets. I loved taking fabric or an old garment and constructing it into something I could put on a body and say “wow, I really just made that!” The act was empowering. But the idea that this skill could be used to simply make old things functional again seemed like the most mundane way to sew. Of course, it seemed helpful, but it would be more of a chore than a creative or fulfilling task. My mom would ask me if I was interested in altering things or darning or patching and I would brush it away and give her the excuse “If I do that, I think it will taint my interest in sewing. It will make something I love into something boring.” I must have been convincing, because she didn’t push me. 

I kept on sewing and got better at making neat seams and straight hems but, eventually, I lost a little bit of steam or inspiration for what I was doing. It was 2020 and I had just finished my first quilt. I was at the Fletcher Free Library one day looking for new inspiration in the big non-fiction art book section when I found this beautiful book about mending. It had poetical sentences and sweet hand drawn illustrations and it felt nice and heavy in my hands. I decided to check it out. When I got home, I sat down on my couch and flew away into the whimsical and cozy world the authors painted. I was utterly converted. 

I finished the book in one sitting and promptly went upstairs and found a pair of holey socks in my drawer and attempted my first darning. It was a little messy but I enjoyed the method of weaving back and forth and creating a little colorful cover for a spot that had previously been broken. It was so satisfying and beautiful that I started to do more and more. I had never been so excited to see a hole in my clothes. And then it was on to patching. I patched jeans, bags, sleeves… and I quickly became hooked. I first did my own clothing but, once I ran out of repairs, I began to do work for my family and then neighbors. The work felt addictive in an odd way; like I could get sucked away for hours at a time and not mind the aching of my focused fingers. 

Now that I am a mender, I feel like this version of sewing that I used to push away has become a strong part of my identity. It’s not only an activity, but I have found this weird affinity with the action, like I take it on as a role and a marker for my beliefs. The ethos of repair, slowness, and adding a pop of color arches throughout my life. I now co-run a mending club, have worked free-lance mending, and continue to stitch my own clothing in my free time, but I have begun to wonder about the possibilities of where this could take me. What are the different historical practices of mending? What cultures mend more than others, and why is this art resurfacing more in the past few years? Could a Mender be a job? Instead of new clothing boutiques could there instead be repair boutiques where people come to get their old textiles fixed, patched, or repurposed? 

Most of the information out there about mending is available through printed art books (like the one I initially found at my library) or youtube videos on the Japanese arts of sashiko and boro and the Bangladeshi craft of kantha. There are also some blog posts about darning your socks or other artsy visible mending techniques. It’s nice to see some people getting excited about these historical crafts and useful techniques, but as I begin to research these I feel a sense of sadness at how this craft seems to be trending in a way that feels less like a revolution, and more like a cute new thing that will also pass as people get obsessed with the next look in fashion. I am curious to see if younger generations will catch onto these techniques not only for embellishment and sweet sustainability markers, but as an actual practice and love. I think mending is lovely because it not only has this environmental factor of making clothing last longer, taking textiles out of the waste stream and stopping demand for more new, new, new, but also it is just a delightful, slow, and mindful craft. You can take an item you love and don’t want to part with, add color, play with texture, and add life to garments and objects that would otherwise have to go. It is nostalgic and creative and it carries me. 

As I continue to learn about mending, about repair, and about repurposing textiles and other materials, I want to keep this heartiness and original inspiration in mind.