I’m Sara (she/her)! Nice to meetcha! I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none - but did you know that phrase originally ended positively: “but oftentimes better than a master of one.” I love trying out new hobbies, crafts, art media, cooking, baking, you name it. I used to knit and crochet a lot, but around 2020 I started embroidering more and discovered the world of visible mending and fell in love. I now co-host a mending club in Denver, and I teach mending workshops. I’m excited (and nervous) to teach middle-schoolers some darning basics for the first time next month.
I think the most important thing someone needs to know when getting started mending
...is that it’s okay if you mess up, and that’s coming from a perfectionist. I’ve re-worked past mends, covered them up, and rocked them if they were functional! The only way to get better is practice.
What inspires your mending?
The first couple of menders I found online were Jessica Marquez and Skye Pennant, and I loved their sashiko projects. I was captivated by the elaborate patterns made from simple running stitches.
Besides fixing up some simple seam rips in my early days of mending, I enjoyed trying my hand at a multitude of sashiko patterns to mend jeans. Soon after incorporating embroidery stitching with mending, I discovered darning. Enter sock darning and loom darning! I bought a vintage Soviet speedweve mini loom darner and almost never darn without a loom anymore.
While I had the Swift Darning Loom, I mended a series of socks for my sister-in-law.
She asked me to take them home to mend after the birth of her son in April. So I planned on working on them throughout the year and got so busy with life and work during the summer that I didn’t end up darning them until early autumn.
I used a number of methods for the socks, including brushing up on Swiss darning, and some simpler running stitches. And the method I used the most was the woven darn using the Swift Darning Loom.
My SIL used to work at Misha & Puff, so a lot of her socks are hand-knit, and I think that the Swift Darner is the perfect size for hand-knit socks: the spacing of the hooks works really well for the spacing of knitted fabric. In addition, the larger rectangle base (compared to the round disc of a Speedweve) came in really handy for those socks with larger areas to mend.
I ended up finishing the darning at Thanksgiving while we were sitting around chatting, and she and my husband helped weave in all the ends of the darns. It was sweet to connect with both of them around mending.
Where do you source your mending materials and tools? Is there anything you have had a hard time finding?
Almost all of my new-to-me mending materials come from creative-reuse stores. I love ReCreative, The Craft Box, and Art Parts in the Denver/Boulder CO area. As far as tools, some are vintage like my Soviet Speedweve from the 1960’s or my darning egg a yoga student gave me. Some are small-business handmade like @slowstitchclub’s stitching templates and a wooden darning mushroom from @woodrockturning. And others still are 3D-printed like some simple darning discs.
Did you have previous experience with darning before receiving the Swift Darning Loom? How does that compare with loom darning?
I did have previous experience with darning. I had tried my hand a couple of times with swiss darning and honeycomb darning. I had done quite a few unassisted woven darns as well as many, many Speedweve woven darns. I like both the Speedweve and the Swift Darning Loom for different use-cases: Speedweve for machine-knit & woven garments; Swift for beefier fabrics like hand-knits and chunky sweaters. The only thing I think would have been handier is a rounded surface to mend things like heels. I ended up adding a darning mushroom to the top surface of the Swift when I was using it for a heel so it would lay nicely. Perhaps even a suggestion that one could add something like a darning disc to help with that!
I had mighty plans for my Mending Migration time like letting Mending Club attendees try it out, using the longer weaving work surface, and plain-ol’ weaving (sans darning) with it, but life got in the way. I so enjoyed the time I had with it, and I’m so glad I got to mend all of the socks I did! AND my sister-in-law saw how much I loved it at Thanksgiving and gifted me my own for Christmas!
Sara's website: mendbend.com
