This is such a useful book! I learned to sew 16 or 17 years ago, and I’ve grown a lot in my knowledge since then. But mending was something I’ve spent very little time on, so when I saw a friend had this book, I was interested to get to read it. There are so many practical, useful skills demonstrated here. I’d heard of a few of them, but many others were completely new to me. I love that Erin starts with the basics—what fabric pairings you can make, and which ones are not such a good idea—and which needles and thread work best for which projects. Then she goes on to talk about how to do different kinds of stitches and ways to patch or darn things, and a lot in those sections were things I’d never heard of before. Full of illustrations as well as descriptive text, this book gives me hope that one day I could maybe mend things in such a way that I’d be happy with the outcome, rather than looking sadly at a bunchy, ill-fitting piece of cloth. One day, I hope I can get my own copy of this book to have available as reference material. It’s well worth reading if you’re at all interested in fixing your clothing instead of replacing it. ( )

A through review of mending techniques intended for the novice sewist. In spite of the title none of the techniques is new or very modern. Like the author, I also grew up at a time when mending had to be invisible so it is interesting to see examples of creative and decorative work. There are lots of these examples in the book along with discussion of the techniques used to restore the clothing.

library book read 4/12/2023 ( )