I promised you old fashioned skills, and it doesn’t get any more old fashioned then mending! Did you immediately imagine the mother in an old story book sitting in her rocking chair beside the fire with her mending basket? While I can’t fault the atmosphere in your little imagining, you can fix your own clothes with nothing more than a needle and thread. (And scissors. You’re going to have a bad time without scissors). Follow along while I fix a tear in the lining of my winter coat, and talk about why mending matters even in our modern world.
Look at that great big long tear down the inside of the sleeve. Serves me right for ignoring it! I got some annoyingly accurate experience in where the saying “a stitch in time saves nine” comes from.
This is actually a great place to start making a case for mending your clothes though. If I had taken the time when it first ripped, a few quick stitches would have taken care of it. I think everyone has had a rip or a hole that they have ignored until it was too late to save the garment. Either it wasn’t fixable anymore, or it had grown beyond your skill to fix. That can make a piece of clothing into something that you can’t even donate anymore, because it isn’t in good condition.
The first thing I had to do was sew up the seam that had kept ripping farther and farther down as I ignored it. I used an overcast stitch, to keep raw edges inside and give it a bit of extra strength. You don’t need to know how to do more than one or two stitches to mend simple tears! When that was done I was left with the original site of the tear, where all of the underarm seams meet.
This is often a weak point in garments, so to make sure that it was both fixed securely and had some extra ease to prevent it from tearing again, I added a small triangle of extra cloth to the area. (I save small scraps leftover from my sewing projects for exactly this reason. If I ever need to patch or mend something I have made, it is so much easier if I have some of the same fabric to work with!)
It was worth it to me to spend time fixing this coat because I had made it myself. I have tried to slowly change over my wardrobe so that there are more and more things I would care about enough to fix. This doesn’t mean that I will have made everything I wear. I just want to take the time to stop and think to myself before I buy a new piece of clothing. Is it well made enough that it will last? Will I wear it for long enough that I will want to fix it so that I can keep wearing it?
So many of the clothing options around us are practically seen as disposable. They are poorly made and inexpensive, because trends will have changed enough by the time it wears out that you will have no desire to repair it. We have lost the skill of mending because we just haven’t needed anymore.
While some repairs are complicated, I have met people who couldn’t confidently sew on a button. (I am absolutely not saying this to shame them. We aren’t magically born with skills, they need to be taught!)
Is there a type of clothing repair you wish you knew how to do? One you want me to show you?
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