Mending at the Library in Mid-December

 

Every month, my mending group volunteers at the library for one afternoon, mending whatever people bring in.

Sometimes, we do send people away--like, we can't resole shoes or anything--and sometimes we'll tell them something to buy and come back with next month, like if they need a very specific zipper or something, but the group actually has a pretty big stock of bits and bobs and notions and fabrics, so mostly people can walk in with a damaged piece and walk out with it mended. 

To be honest, I didn't attend this latest Mending Day expecting to mend anything; I'd hoped I could set up at a table in the back, just happen to let all the patrons wander over to someone else, and spend four hours sewing my Girl Scout troop's Elf Project stocking and the wool felt moveable alphabet for my niece's Christmas present.

Well, I did get the stocking sewn!

After that, I had time to take about one stitch in my next felt letter, and then I was too busy actually mending things to pick it up again.

Our group has a regular monthly clientele of older single men who bring us their mending every month, which... fair and valid! I'd totally do the same! So I mended a couple of tiny holes in a sweatshirt and a hoodie, then let the patron borrow my needle and thread and talked him through mending the rest while I sewed up a rip in a pair of fleece pants and another in a sheet. For my own mending, I like to stitch only, with no interfacing allowed to muck up my sensory experience. But for this mending, another volunteer taught me how to use tricot interfacing, which comes in both white and black for matching purposes, and stabilizing the fabric DID make the sewing go a LOT more quickly!

Then a librarian from a different branch came in to ask about the possibility of the group mentoring teen learn-to-sew programs. I am VERY interested in that, so we spoke for a while and hopefully next year, I'll find myself sewing with teenagers.

Then I sewed up a very fiddly rip in a very fiddly open-weave decorative pillowcase, using even more tricot and a bunch of stitching lines across the rip to ideally stabilize the fraying seams so that I don't see this patron again in January to mend that same rip again.

Near the end of our session, a patron came in wanting us to sew up a rip in his pocket. The only problem? He was literally wearing those pants right then...

His marching orders were to come back in January, with the pants washed, dried, and NOT on his body.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!