How it All Started
I came to mending through two streams. First, through my thrifty grandmothers and aunties. I inherited many textile gifts from women who made beautiful things from scraps and remnants. My Danish grandmother never sat down with out a needlework project in her hands. She had 12 children, and dozens of grandchildren, so I am thankful that a few of her hand-made items came down to me.
My second mending influence came from our family hobby: Living History Reenacting. When out kids were young, we attended camps and battle reenactments that focused on the 18th century in the American Colonies. I would take my spinning wheel and help with community dye-pots, while the kids ran around with their friends. My husband combed wool for me when he wasn’t marching off to one battle or another.
Since we were poor as church-mice, I made all our 18th c clothes. I also mended and altered the clothes as needed. Visible Mending was a kind of badge of honor among our fellow hobbyists. It was also a good creative outlet for me, during the years when teaching full-time took up all my art-making energy.
My mom loved to help me make the kids 18th c clothes and we found great fabric at outlets and thrift stores. I learned to love natural fabrics, and discovered that linen and wool are easier to mend than modern cotton blends.
To this day, we are more likely to mend or alter an article of clothing than to discard it. By “we,” I mean ME, at the request of the family. My colleagues often ask me for help with mending, I don’t mind, it is quite satisfying to see my handiwork in motion.
When visible mending began to trend on social media, I felt a bit smug. I recognized the historical roots of thriftiness and a concern for the environment. I also could identify mending as an artistic badge of honor, clothing that conveys a message. My daughter coined the phrase “edited shirt” for a much loved linen shirt of mine that is now covered in boro-style1 mending.
Here are two comments from Thoreau. I admit, he can come across as pompous and pedantic some times, but I think he is right about the fear of being unfashionable.
I wonder what he would think of our modern, mechanically-distressed and patched blue jeans?2
“As for clothing, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience…
I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this, -- who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended, but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it.”
―Henry David Thoreau,Walden & Civil Disobedience
Slow vs Fast Fashion
Patching, darning and mending are important means of self expression, not only to demonstrate one’s thriftiness, but also to add some personal flair to a ready-made garments. And, as a political statement, wearing mended clothing is an act of resistance against the drumbeat of consumerism. Mended or altered clothes spend a few more years out of the land-fill3 and help reverse the trend of fast-fashion.
Do you have a mended garment that you are proud to wear?
For a lovely audio tour through Mending Around the World, check out episode 12 of season 2 on Haptic & Hue. To be honest, every episode is treasure chest of knowledge! Link here.
I am old enough to remember when jeans came stiff as boards from the Ranch Supply or an Army Navy Store. We had to break them in ourselves, (sometime driving over them in the with the family car). There was a parking lot in Austin where folks could buy and sell old cowboy jeans. I understood that they shipped those second hand jeans to Japan and England where they sold for hundreds of dollars.
Natural materials are 100% biodegradable, in the Slow Clothing and Fiber-shed movements there is always an end-of-usefulness plan for fabric: composting, for example, or remaking into stuffing or insulation.
June- thank you for the inspiration! I have gotten away from hand sewing and plan to get back to it. I have a pile of clothing that needs mending!
Love this post! Going to check out the podcast episode.