Yes, I’m familiar with the “don’t ask me to hem your pants” mantra, but my church asked those who could to host activities as a fundraiser, so I offered a mending clinic. My blogging friend Mariss, in South Africa, teaches mending, so I thought I could, too. If you click on this link, you’ll see that her mending class is much more structured than mine!
I just told people to bring what they wanted to mend and we’d figure it out. Most of us had fun! Here are a few of the successes:
This older commercial quilt had been attacked by a dog; the patch was cut from a piece of fabric I quilted years ago.
There was a little hole in this favorite T shirt, so the owner covered it with a pretty coordinating fabric that ended up looking like a badge or pin.
This fleece blanket had somehow been split down the middle; the owner fixed it by sewing wide binding to both sides.
Another woman patched her jeans in multiple places, but I failed to get a picture of her her work.
And despite all the mending fun, I got the binding on this little art quilt.
Circle from Ankara fabric, 45″ x 45″
Have you done any mending lately? And BTW, we didn’t hem any pants!
Zippy Quilts 
The colorful patches are a good solution. Your mini-quilt is a wonderful way to show off the African print. My recent non-quilting sewing was making three pillows out of flannel shirts. Quilting is a lot less nerve-wracking!
Indeed, I prefer quilting to pillows, mending, clothing construction, doing dishes….Thanks for visiting and commenting.
Yes to offering services for a fundraiser! Yes to Mariss! Yes to (Y)our “we’ll figure it out” approach! Yes to success in the event! And especially: Yes to all things Ankara! It’s a beaut, Zip. 🙂
Thanks! And your comment makes me think of that word-of-the-year fad…maybe the word should be YES. At least for those of us who HAVE learned to say no when appropriate.
Lovely art quilt and very nice to share your mending skills! A little mending can save so many things!
And we also discussed and showed some things that cannot be successfully mended–ha!
It must be summer, as we are all looking to do little things. I love the little patches and the whole idea — what a great help! Did you do it for them, or just have a machine set up where they could mend it themselves (probably with your patches). Love your African quilt.
Well, the idea was to teach people to mend, so I didn’t do any of it myself. Most people didn’t really need a workshop but signed up to make money for the church, I think.
What a great idea for a mini-workshop! I find that such – tears; errors; mistakes; holes – usually prompt something so creative that the piece looks even better than it did before the tear/error/mistake/hole happened! How nice of you to lead everyone through this. But darn. No pants to shorten/hem?! How disappointing. (Ha!)
We had a good time and I was told today that there have been positive comments about it at church, so I guess it was a success even without hemming pants!