Modern Mending - IgniteLit

Title: Modern Mending
Author: Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald
Major Themes: Sewing, Creativity
Synopsis: A practical, useful guide to mending your own clothing, with lots of illustrations of different techniques.

A sewing friend loaned Modern Mending to me recently, and although I knew I wanted to read it, I didn’t know if I’d have time to finish it before I needed to get it back to her. I was able to find the time, though, and in the end, it became quite a gripping read. I’m thankful now that I had a chance to read it!

When I was eight, my grandmother taught me how to sew. I started on some simple project then—an apron, I think—but over the years, my experience has grown to the point where I make a lot of my clothing and have also branched out into a few different creative projects. I’m not a master seamstress, by any stretch of the imagination—but it is something I enjoy doing, and where I can gain more knowledge (or experience) with a hobby, I’m interested. That’s where this book came in, partly because mending is not a strength of mine, but it is something I’d like to grow in. Every time you wear clothing, eventually, it wears out, and if you don’t know how to fix the garments, they go in the trash. And often, that’s a waste (especially if it doesn’t require a lot of fixing).

Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald has been mending clothing for a long time, and she’s spent hours collecting all her knowledge and experience in the field and putting it into this book. Covering everything from patching a little hole in pajama pants to full-blown rip repairs and various forms of darning, there’s likely to be a method described here that would work for almost any kind of mending you need to do. Erin is a fan of what I would describe as “pop-out” mending—the visible kind that almost shouts, “I’m here!” Typically, that’s not the kind of mending I enjoy—but it does make it easier to see what she’s doing in her many illustrations of how to use the different techniques.

Not only does she share skills for mending; but she also spends a lot of time talking about which fabrics work together and which ones do not, and tools that make mending easier (some of the needles and thread she talks about are ones I’d never heard of before!), and different stitches that can be used for different projects. I’ve heard of a few of the stitches, but I wish I could keep this book on hand so I can refer to it when the stitches I know don’t do the job the way I need them to!

There are three main sections to this book. The first section covers the tools of the trade and different fabrics you typically would work with. The second section shares different methods for stitching, patching, darning, etc. The third section gives case studies—mending projects that Erin worked on and completed, demonstrating the methods she talks about through the first two parts of the book. I found the last section especially interesting, after reading all about it in the first two sections!

If you are interested in learning how to mend your clothing and other household items, Modern Mending would be an excellent asset to have on hand. Not only is it practical; it’s full of illustrations for how to do the different techniques, so those of us who are more visually oriented can learn how to do them (there’s also plenty of text for those who learn better from the written word!). I found all the illustrations very helpful, even for the few methods I have used in the past. I’m hoping to get my own copy of this book to have on hand one day. This would be a gem for any seamstress!

WARNING: Heck is used on pg. 213, swear is used on pg. 237, and on pg. 160, as well as a few other places, she says, “The potentially fixable problems often can be solved with [a list of helps]…and/or use of swear words.” Occasionally, she also talks about how we must help solve our current climate issues by doing things like mending (which I agree with, but not necessarily the anti-human thoughts driving a lot of decisions like that today).