Your favorite shirt develops a tear. What do you do?

Many people simply throw it out and buy another. After all, it’s much easier to buy a shirt rather than learning how to sew or seeking someone else out to repair it for them. But the fact is that in a society where fast fashion and overconsumption dominates, getting a new wardrobe every year or so is just not sustainable. This is the dilemma that I was faced with a few months ago. One of my favorite shirts tore, and I asked myself what to do with it. Then, I came across a concept called visible mending right at the most opportune time.

Visible mending is just as the name suggests: mending a garment, pillowcase, or just about any piece of cloth in a visible, striking manner. This is the direct opposite of invisible mending: the process of seamlessly mending something to restore it back to the way it was before. The issue with invisible mending is that it requires a lot of skill and precision (speaking from my own experience), which can quickly become frustrating. 

Visible mending can be much more messy, imprecise, and fun. This stems from the fact that there are a variety of different ways that you can visibly mend something — embroidery, crochet, sewing, visible darning, and patching, to name a few. Because there’s so much room for experimentation, anyone can find a style that fits their needs and skill level. 

Embroidery

Embroidery is great for small holes, or long, thin tears that are easy to connect back together. For smaller holes, commonly used designs are stars, flowers, and hearts, but the great thing about embroidery is that you can create virtually any design with enough patience.

Here are the items that you will need: a sewing or embroidery needle, scissors, embroidery floss (be careful, there are threads out there that may look like embroidery floss but can’t be divided into thinner strands, such as pearl threads. Embroidery requires different thread thickness, so embroidery floss usually comes in coils of six strands, while other threads such as pearl only have one), fabric scissors, and an embroidery hoop (optional, but recommended to make sure your fabric stays taut while working). 

It’s best to plan out your design ahead of time and sketch it out on your fabric, especially if you’re making intricate designs. However, I often find myself getting hit with sudden inspiration in the middle of my work and end up adding more than I initially planned. Let your creativity guide you!

Darning

Darning is the process of taking a needle and thread (or any other material, like yarn) and reweaving fabrics with holes. The thread used in darning is usually a similar thickness and material to the original textile (for example, using cotton thread for a cotton shirt). In invisible darning, the color of the thread is also matched. Visible darning, on the other hand, involves purposefully mismatching the color of the thread with the original. A great example of this is using multi-color yarn to darn a black sock, in order to make the mending work especially pop.

Here are the items that you’ll need for darning: a thread of your choice, scissors, a crochet hook/sewing machine/needle depending on the specific type of darning that you’re doing (make sure the hole is big enough for your thread!), and something to keep your fabric steady, like an embroidery hoop or darning egg/mushroom. Some people use darning looms to make darning easier, but it can definitely be done without one.   

Patching

Patching is one of the easiest and fastest ways to mend, especially for larger holes. There are plenty of fun iron-on patches being sold everywhere, and there is always the option of buying mending fabric and designing a patch yourself. 

You can sew fabrics on to patch up holes as well — if you have any colorful scrap fabric lying around, that can be a fun way to make the mended garment pop. 

Here is what you will need: your patch of choice, and either an iron or sewing kit, depending on if you’re patching with an iron-on or a piece of fabric.  

Crochet

Utilizing crochet can come in a variety of ways. They can involve patching by making unique patches through crochet, and then sewing them on. Sweaters can also be mended by crocheting the hole back together directly. Certain darning techniques involve crocheting as well.  

Here is what you will need: a crochet hook, yarn, a needle, and thread (if you choose to create a crochet patch). 

Sashiko

Sashiko is a method that originated in Japan approximately 500 years ago, during the Edo period. It was developed out of necessity, because the government reserved certain fabrics and colors for the upper class. This meant that fabric and clothing were highly treasured among the lower class, and every last scrap was used or reused.

Sashiko is mainly used for reinforcing materials by sewing geometric patterns into fabric, but you can also incorporate it into your mending by patching (usually using extra fabric) to fill holes, and then using sashiko to sew them on.

Here is what you will need: a needle (there are specialized sashiko needles that are longer than your standard needle, but any needle used for sewing or embroidery works), scissors, thread (embroidery floss, sewing thread, or something similar or your choice), and a patch or extra fabric if you have something that needs patching up.

There are many different types of sashiko patterns, but if you are uncertain about what design to use (or uncertain of your ability to keep geometric patterns even, like me), there are stencil and idea books that you can consult. 

Sustainability

So, why is all of this important?

For many people, clothes are an important method of expression and experimentation. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course — creativity should not be stifled. 

The problem, however, is the rate at which we are going through clothes. Even in 2014, consumers were buying 60% more than in 2000, but only kept clothes for half as long. Coupled with the fact that only 30% of Americans today mend their clothing, the rate at which we are going through clothing is at an all-time high. In fact, a truck-full worth of clothes is dumped every second on our planet.

The fashion industry is the third most polluting industry in the world, after oil and agriculture. It’s responsible for 8-10% of annual emissions, 20% of global wastewater, and using 86 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of natural water resources in a year. The run-off from washing machines is also responsible for 34.8% of global microplastic pollution (coming from, you guessed it, our clothes). That’s at least half a million tons of microplastic waste a year that has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is often seas, streams, and poor countries, where it affects humans and wildlife alike.   

Fast fashion companies, such as Shein, also exploit low-wage workers in the Global South to cheaply mass-produce poorly made clothing. Add all of this up, and making sure our clothes are sustainable and long-lasting should be a priority. 

This is not to say that everyone who shops at fast fashion companies is at fault, however. For many low-income individuals, the only clothes available in the market within their price range are clothes from fast fashion companies. What we need to do is to change the culture around fashion, and how we view our clothes.  

Mending our clothes is an easy way to reduce the amount of clothes waste we produce and fight back against unethical fashion practices. “Visible mending is a really great way to keep using old clothes while using materials that you have lying around from old projects,” wrote Skylar Tom ’25 (she/her), Co-President of Bronx Science’s Crochet and Knitting for Everyone (CAKE) club. 

In a later interview that I conducted with her, she elaborated on her thoughts on visible mending, and the effects of social media and fashion micro-trends on consumers. Tom believes trends can be fun in the moment, but in participating, people are compromising their individuality. “You can express yourself through it [visible mending]… I think when you’re stuck to your screen you kind of lose that expression,” she said.

Tom also believes encouraging visual mending allows individuals to practice important skills, such as sewing, and value our belongings more. She notes, “I think knowing how to fix your own clothes, or anything in general, is really important because things break. But just because something breaks doesn’t mean you have to rush to replace it right away.” As craft and needlework skills become less utilized, it’s all the more important to encourage mending as a core skill.

Visible mending is therefore a way for individuals to value their clothes and fight back against this industry that is, in one way or another, harming everyone involved. Vanessa Encarnacion ’25 (she/her), Co-Director of Costume in Bronx Science’s Theater crew, spoke about this. “Having a really personable and very intimate little detail between you and your clothes really makes a difference between a one-piece that you’ll use for a few times and something that will become a staple and possibly a hand-me-down for future generations,” she said. If individuals teach others to take pride in the imperfections of our clothing — often from being well-worn through love and use — may very well lead to the fashion industry being revolutionized.

The methods covered above are just some of the commonly used methods of visible mending. There are without a doubt more methods you can practice, and with them more room for mixing and matching. Oftentimes individuals will combine different methods of visible mending, like darning a hole, and then embroidering around it to create a more unique design. If you’re unsure where to start, large craft brands like D.M.C. usually have free patterns and guides, and if you search, there’s most likely a community of crafters near you that can help you start out. 

Visible mending is an art, just as much as it is a skill, and it’s an art that I hope can be shared with a wider audience. There are as many methods to visible mending as there are threads in your shirt — it’s just a matter of figuring out which one you prefer. So have fun, knowing that you’re doing something good, one snip, stitch, and patch at a time.

“Having a really personable and very intimate little detail between you and your clothes really makes a difference between a one-piece that you’ll use for a few times and something that will become a staple and possibly a hand-me-down for future generations,” said Vanessa Encarnacion ’25 (she/her), Co-Director of Costume in Bronx Science’s Theater crew.