Darn it!: The art of mending
It was one of those overcast, ghastly Saturdays when my to do list was equal to the dreariness of the weather. Rain, followed by snow – oh, great!
I managed to busy myself with paperwork and, around 11:30 a.m., I checked to see if the mail had arrived. It did. Three magazines. Oh, joy. The day was saved.
Cozy in my loveseat with a hot cup of tea at hand, I opened Living and I found both reminiscence and purpose in an article about a third of the way in on, would you believe it, mending. Living is Martha Stewart’s magazine and, since I have a relationship with Martha that vacillates from admiration to annoyance to “you have got to be kidding?,” I always approach Living with wariness. I mean, most of the recipes require items that I do not have in my pantry and have no intention of purchasing. For instance, I know that sumac is a spice (or is it an herb?) Well, I don’t want to invest in something that I will use once and then add to the collection of one-hit wonder seasonings in my pantry.
But this time, my gosh, I was transfixed. The article entitled, “Modern Mending,” was about saving garments by mending, and by “mending” I mean not just sewing a seam that had opened, but artfully patching actual holes and darning.
At one time, mending was a normal activity in most households.
I remember my mother refurbishing my father’s shirts by turning the collars and cuffs when the outside became fuzzy or ragged. I have a clear picture of her sitting quietly darning my Dad’s socks. I’m sure she darned ours, too, and with three growing daughters, shortening or lengthening skirts was an ordinary occurrence. Hand-me-downs were commonplace. A skirt that was too large was unceremoniously altered – take in the waist and take up the hem. As you grew, your mother would let out the waist and work a kind of magic on the hem. The edge that became the bottom of the hem would have acquired a telltale wear mark, wear that the more accomplished could hide with a tiny, around-the-skirt tuck along that wear line or, with more hutzpah, the addition of rickrack. It was what everyone did.
My grandmother, trained as a seamstress, was a wizard at mending so that her work never showed. And she was rightly proud of her invisible stitches and disappearing patches. Because I never achieved even a fraction of her skills. I am not a mender.
I have a darning egg, actually two, one that was my mother’s and one that I bought when I thought I would darn my husband’s socks. This was in the “very-way-back” years when time, family, work and all those things that are part of “having it all” were so important, and darning lost out. Yes, I did make garments, and would resew up a seam that had lost its way or, occasionally reattach an escaped button. But, as I said, I still have the darning egg, an item in my personal museum of life.
There are two pairs of jeans that I’ve tried to fix with iron-on patches, patches that unstuck themselves and present now as curled-up appendages to my inner knees. I would love to keep wearing these jeans, and the article has given me the authority, the permission, to do just that. According to this article, I can use patches and running stitches to embellish the faulty fabric, celebrating the effort that could be seen as a way to reduce overconsumption, the work of one’s hands. To use visible mending, thus elevating the garment and the work. I love it.
My spouse’s much-loved sweater, assaulted by a moth last year, left a hole in the center front. I have avoided any attempt at a fix by forgetting where I put the garment. Well, now I have permission to mount an artistic attack on that perforation.
What I don’t have are darning needles or the appropriate threads to accomplish what is so seductively illustrated in the piece.
I Googled “darning needle” and found an overabundance of references not only to where I could purchase the appropriate supplies for mending all kinds of fabrics, but also several books that honor the act of mending in philosophical, climatological, sociological and financial terms.
The Japanese have a name for this, Sashiko.
Is it only me? Does the idea of preserving rather than discarding say something about value, perseverance in a world of bottom lines and throw-aways? Somehow, and maybe this is because I am more past than future, mending is healing, creating as well as repairing, an ode to my grandmother’s button box that is safely stashed in my cupboard but more so near my heart. Do I find this idea a way to give longer life to a garment, to reinvent and keep for other days, to respect the love that my mother and grandmother put into their handwork?
Patched jeans, darned sweater fronts, ripped jackets all fall into another iteration of Wabi Sabi … perfection in imperfection. And … there is honor in caring for the work of our hands.
Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.
