Last week, the New York Times had an article Patchwork as Protest about mending clothes and making the repairs visible. I’m not sure if you can read the article without a subscription. Here’s a salient point: “Americans generated 17 million tons of textile waste in 2017, which included carpets, footwear, sheets and towels but was mostly clothing….Only about 15% of textiles were recycled, meaning landfills received 11.2 million tons of municipal solid waste textiles that year.”

Wow. That’s a lot of fabric, and it’s not including waste from manufacturing of garments, which mostly occurs in Asia. I wish I could find the video I saw a few years ago. It was for a T-shirt company that foraged for textile ends in (I think) Viet Nam, then washed the fabric and made T-shirts out of them. The video showed their scout scaling massive hills of fabric waste, seeking lengths that were of good quality and useful. The size of those hills was incredible.

So, the idea behind mending is that clothing gets repaired instead of tossed into the trash—with visible mending, the repairs become an artistic expression.

This article led me on a wonderful morning of browsing, including a visit to the site, Visible Mending, mentioned in the article. Check out the mends illustrated on their Techniques page. The article also mentions Ace & Jig and Tom of Holland, if you’re looking for more inspiration.

I find this all very inspiring. I’m old enough to remember everything being mended, but also that the mends were often ugly, even if practical. How many of us in the 1960’s had pants that were lengthened to accommodate a growth spurt by the addition of a band of some other fabric at the cuff? I remember the hand-me-down cycle between my mom and aunt (her sister) – two of my cousins were older than me, so some of their gently-used clothes came to me, and some of mine went back to my younger cousin. Do people even do that anymore?

Celebrating mending is interesting and I think it’s smart to reclaim those practical skills of making-do.

Visible mending also opens new possibilities for thrifting. To date, I’ve passed by the sweaters with holes at the thrift stores, or worked around the holes when upcycling those sweaters into bags—like these ones:
Those patches on the brown bag to the right cover the armholes and also a few holes. I felted that man’s sweater and used it upside down – the waist ribbing is at the top. The left one didn’t felt (probably a superwash wool) and the grey fabric is from the scraps left when the tailor made a jacket for the mister from the Harris Tweed we bought directly from the weaver in Scotland.  This one is a Gap sweater that was felted at the thrift store already. I felted it a bit more. It had a raglan sleeve. I cut straight across the front for the bag front, and the flap is the back up to the neckline. I gave this one away, but found another just like it at the thrift store. Same issue. (Apparently people who buy wool sweaters at the Gap are inclined to toss them into the washing machine rather than read the instructions.) I like the colours, but haven’t done anything with the second one yet.

I also worked around the holes for this tote bag. This bag is made of socks I knit of Noro Kureyon Sock, a yarn I loved for its colors but one that wasn’t very sturdy. I walked holes in the feet of those socks in record time, which annoyed me. So, I cut the socks at the top of the heel, then sliced those tubes open. I also saved the top half of the foot section, then patched them all together into this tote bag:As you can see, I ended up cutting the pieces smaller—I think there are quarters of leg sections—to make all the patches work together. I love this bag, even though it’s a bit lumpy. (I used a zigzag stitch to join the pieces. It might be smoother if they were serged.) There are pink squares with a bit of purple which are clearly not Noro anything – that was a sock yarn that felted the very first time I washed the socks. Also a pretty color. Also annoyed me. (I don’t wash knit socks by hand. They go in the washer on a gentle cycle then are hung to dry. The label said that was okay for this yarn but the label lied.)

I have a whole bin of socks to be mended—they all have holes in the soles—and recently bought a darning egg to get that job done. Fortunately, I still have bits and ends of many of the yarns. I’ve been (slowly) working on an afghan of mitred squares in sock yarn, but will rummage in the bag of scraps for matches. I need to brush up on my darning technique.

Do you do any visible mending or darning?