Happy (statistically likely* Summer) Solstice!
*because most of my readers are in the north. happy Winter Solstice to the southern hemisphere-dwellers among us :)
(yeah, this is publishing a little past the actual Solstice. It's ok. We got this.)
Summer or winter,
I’m a person who isn’t often caught without a little craft project close at hand.
I’ve been honing this habit for years, and I wanted to share some of my current favourites with you in the form of summer mending tips. Especially since you might struggle with keeping a regular mending flow among all the other precious summer activities!
I love pulling out a blanket and mending in a park when the weather's nice (under some lovely leafy trees)
Carry a travel mending kit, just in case.
I pack a needle, thread, safety pins and snips in my travel bag. Usually, it’s because I have a mending project in mind (pro tip: pack one thing in your travel wardrobe that needs a small repair, then prioritize fixing it so that you can wear the thing!) but this time, Scott’s only button-down shirt needed some emergency stitches and my little kit came in handy.
Bonus: if you have the space, make sure you bring some patching fabric. I’d recommend some jersey (t-shirt material) and something woven (like quilting cotton or denim). We didn’t bring any such fabric, which is why we reinforced his shirt with just stitches and no patches! But the stitches did very well at stabilizing the rips, and made for a nice quiet afternoon activity.
Scott set up the stitches almost like darning across the hole...and then just didn't add the weft threads. The running stitches, at least in the short term, stopped the weak fabric from ripping further.
A few stolen stitches adds up quickly.
My secret weapon? Hand stitching. It might feel (and be) slower than machine stitching, but if it means you can pick up your mending at home for even ten minutes without the friction of setting up your sewing machine, or while you’re away from your sewing machine, that repair will slowly-but-surely come together. And perhaps on a timeline that actually ends up being faster than waiting in the queue for your sewing machine’s attention!
Hand-sewing is meditative and portable! And gets people curious and talking about repair :):)
The more, the merrier.
Keep with your top three repair projects somewhere you can easily pick up on your way out. This way, you can decide which best fits the vibe of wherever you’re going. If I’m travelling, this usually means packing a few things that need mending and prioritizing what I need to wear first ;) Having a couple projects to choose from means I can switch to a different one if I get bored or stuck. Socks are a great thing to mend on the go!
Socks are a sweet portable mending project you can keep in your bag.
Refresh old favourites with a dye party.
Truly! Pick a colour and ask your friends if they have anything they want to dye that shade. The easiest option is something like a Rit dye, but there is a whole rainbow you could achieve through natural dyes as well. Do some research to see what dye plants might be growing in your area – some may even be considered invasive weeds. In fact, one of my favourite dye plants is Buckthorn, whose purple berries dye a beautiful green (!) and your local field naturalists will probably thank you for gathering it.
The green can shift from bright to muted, I think we added iron to the above dye pot which dulls it!
But remember:
It’s important with any foraging to be mindful and scatter your harvests as to not stress the plants by taking too much. This means thinking about not just your collection, but that of the people before and after you as well! With certain plants in certain areas of the world, (like Buckthorn in Ontario) it’s less of an issue, but it’s best to be cautious and informed.
Or just buy boxed dyes and enjoy the easy, vibrant colour. Dyeing your old clothes at home is still more environmentally friendly (and maybe fun!) than buying new.
Do what you can, and enjoy it!
If you’re taking steps toward building repair into your everyday life, summer might be the hardest season to keep the momentum going. But just like other seasonal rhythms, my mending practice shifts into summer mode. Perhaps smaller, more portable projects are the way to go for you as well?