#mending 101

For those of us living on a small income, buying from sustainable fashion brands is often out of reach. I would like to point out that *buying new but ecological garments isn't the only way to cultivate a slow fashion wardrobe*. Here are a few options for transforming *upcycling* your clothing, thus making fast fashion into slow fashion:

Mend and repair :: patch hand-me-down sweaters, fix holes in leggins from target and other department stores. By giving items a longer life, and preventing unnecessary garbage, fast fashion items become slow fashion! Here are two tutorials I have written on how to mend a torn belt loop on jeans and patch leggings.

Up-cycle clothing that doesn't suit your style :: when preparing for a trip back home and wondering how to acquire some nicer clothing for the trip a friend of mine gifted me a big bag of clothes. Almost all of them were items that we could call "fast fashion" and nearly all also had stains or rips that needed mending. By fixing and adapting these items and then going on to wear them for several years longer, I am keeping them out of the cycle of buy then trash.

Tailor items that don't fit you :: Taking in clothing is quite simple and there are lots of tutorials on how to hem pants and skirts or take in a size or two. I recently made a tutorial on how to take out a skirt, or make a skirt bigger by adding panels.

At some point, we must face the fact that a t-shirt is totally worn out and cannot be used for clothing any longer. In such cases here are a couple of crafts to utilize the fabric and other items from the scrap pile:

Create a Quilt :: if you find yourself with a pile of beautiful & memory-filled scraps -- transform them into a quilt as I have done in this post.

Make Twine :: Longer scraps of fabric, especially those from stretch materials like leggings or jersey cotton t-shirts can be made into a thing rope also known as fabric twine. I wrote a tutorial on how to make twine out of fabric scraps.

Mend and repair :: patch hand-me-down sweaters, fix holes in leggings from department stores. By giving items a longer life, and preventing unnecessary garbage, fast fashion items become slow fashion!

:: How to Hem -- Mending 101 :: 

One of the easiest ways to get started repairing clothing is by hemming pants, skirts or whatever is too long to wear comfortably. I went through my closet and realized that all of my all of my longer skirts were much too long and that the extra length was causing a lot of unnecessary clumsiness. Anyway, to hem a skirt or pants for that materials all you need are: - a needle - thread - about 5 pins but less will work & that is it!

A pile of clothes to be mended + my trusty sewing kit ✂️👝

These purple shorts are probably my most worn item of clothing and have accompanied me during my years of traveling. Recently they acquired a rip and needed to be fixed so, in this post I am going to go through step by step how to mend any kind of small tear using these shorts as an example::

✂️First, trim off any loose threads and turn the shorts (or whatever item of clothing you will be mending) inside out. Then cut out a patch from scrap materials you have already, in this example I used a piece of recycled jeans because I have so much of it. ✂️Personally I am a fan of visible mending and I tend to use thread and patches of different colors. But, if you don’t want to mend to be noticeable, pick a patch and thread that is similar in color to the clothing you will be fixing up. ✂️Secure the patch with pins and then sew (by hand) around the patch at least twice. You can use whichever stitch you know and be sure to tie knots to secure the fabric around each corner.

✂️Then, flip the shorts right side once again and do a final set of sewing around the rip(s) to be sure that they won’t unwind any further.

✂️And there, the rip is secured and these shorts will serve many years longer! By mending clothing we are making it possible to re-use and up-cycle the clothing we already have. And by doing so we are keeping unnecessary items out of the landfill. Donating torn clothing isn’t a guarantee that it will be re-furbished, so the best way to be sure is to mend yourself. This is something I am very passionate about and for that reason I started making mending kits which I sell on my Etsy page::