Mending Workshop

A gentle, hands-on introduction to visible mending and thoughtful repair.

This workshop is to help you learn how to care for your garments and textile homewares to help them last, to reinvigorate clothes that have become worn out, learn the fundamentals of mending, patching and darning, explore the varied approaches to repair, and start a sampler that you can continue to work on at home and keep as a treasured object.

Mending: the act of re-joining areas of separation or splitting with a line of stitching.

Patching: when a piece of cloth is used to prevent an area of loss in the ground material from increasing by covering it.

Darning: the process of weaving in a worn or damaged area with new thread to replicate the structure of the ground.

All these techniques are found in samples or samplers from the 18th century. Samples were usually worked on a small piece of cloth as they were intended for practicing a particular technique. Samplers were created to showcase needlework skills of girls and young women. Both samples and samplers were used to learn and show mending, darning and patching skills.

This will be a step by step guide to creating your own sampler of various techniques whether you’re unfamiliar with mending techniques or confident with a needle, open to everyone. Materials will be provided to everyone so you can continue your sampler at home.