Welcome, new menders!

I had a lovely time teaching mending at the Unley Repair Cafe this morning, and there were some completely new menders and even some new sewers present. Welcome, friends! I was way too busy answering questions and explaining things and generally enjoying the company of fine humans and the sharing of skills to take a photo of anything–but I thought I might take this opportunity to provide links to some content on this blog, and some other collections of mending resources online. There are also links to upcoming mending workshops I will be running.

There is a Tutorials tab at the top of this blog where you might be able to find what you are looking for. But here are some specifics.

How to mend threadbare clothing (the example in this post is a shirt that now has a lot more mending and embroidery on it–seen in the picture below). The linked post was written when it first began to wear very thin.

How to patch your jeans. There are so many ways! Patching on the inside, by hand and with visible running stitches. Patching jeans with a sewing machine–more or less what my mother taught me. Lots of different ways to patch jeans with a machine. Mending a jeans back pocket hole, by hand. Mending the “rear end” or between the thighs on jeans.

Patching threadbare machine knits–like fine merino clothing that moths have nibbled at–with hand sewing and running stitch. Here is another, detailed explanation with lots of pictures, on a cotton knit. This is the way I mend leggings, t shirts, and even machine knit cotton socks (you can see a t shirt and a sock example in this post–and the picture above is a patch cut from an old t shirt that is about to be sewn into that holey sock).

How to bring together the edges of a tear with hand sewing. I use something I call “tent stitch”. The picture above is a high-contrast example of tent stitch.

There are fabulous resources available at Repair What You Wear and there are so many keen sewers and menders on the internet you can find a video, blog post or image of just about any mending technique you want to try! So–go forth and mend your favourites, your treasures, your gardening jeans, or your underwear–whatever needs a bit of love and care to keep it functional.

If you would like to do a mending workshop with me, there are workshops coming up with the lovely folk at The Adelaide Remakery (book here) and at Fabrik in Lobethal. It would be a delight to see you there.