Winging it
The mental load of motherhood, mending and menopause
A friend who reads The Mending Kit recently asked me if I always do this much mending. It made me realise that my posts make it appear as though I’m a prolific repairer, which I am not.
Part of the reason I write this Substack is to inspire other people to get mending so it’s important to dispel this assumption. I am not doing masterful mending every day. I’m muddling through the daily juggle like everyone.
A fair few of the projects I’ve featured on here are months or even years old. Some of my repairs are commissions from clients. When I have the time and head space I do a new repair to feature. At times, knowing that I need to write a post spurs me on to complete a mending project. Not this week. Today it’ll be a couple of photos from my archives of some jeans I’m wearing today.
Considering I’m also on a mission to make friends with imperfection, I don’t want anyone to be under the illusion that I’m a working mum to young kids, who volunteers at their school, keeps a perfect house and repairs clothes in every spare moment I have. I don’t want to appear like I’m doing it all and then some. I am definitely not.
In fact, I’ve drafted most of this post standing in the queue at the chemist. I should be home at my desk but I have to wait here to pick up my HRT subscription because it’s late and I needed it yesterday. Not having it will make my life even more of a juggle.
And by the time I get home, HRT in hand (hurray!), I’ve decided I need to email my children’s school because of some concerning behaviour I witnessed in the playground this morning. So, by the time I get back to typing this my deadline is severely squeezed. And to top it all off I suddenly remember I’m going to Ninja Warrior this evening to watch a bunch of sugar-fuelled 6-year-olds jump like no-one’s watching, which means I won’t have my usual post-school sliver of time to polish and post this.
I have spun off. This was not exactly the post I planned but I don’t have my normal number of hours to devote to writing this week because of all the above. Oh, and I’ve just remembered I have to leave the house early before school pick up to go and buy end-of-year ‘thank you’ gifts for my youngest son’s teachers.
Despite my plan and good intentions to write about mending, life has taken over today. The everyday mental load of motherhood and the experience of peri-menopause are real. Writing about it and normalising us all talking about it is important. And, if you’re thinking, ‘oh that’s not for me, I’m not a parent / I’m never going to experience menopause’ then I’d urge you to consider for a moment that you may just know someone who is so it can’t hurt to read about it now can it?
As I said, I’m conscious not to create the illusion that I’m incredibly industrious in the mending department. So I thought I’d share a couple of repairs to my jeans and be very open about the fact that I did them years ago.
One of these repairs - the oval stitching to the knee, above - I’m pleased with. The other one, below, well, let’s say it’s ‘experimental’. A bit like being a Mum in fact. Some days things go to plan, everyone’s reasonably happy and things feel okay. And other days, it feels like an experiment and you don’t know what you’re doing. Everything is a bit messy and the day didn’t go the way you’d intended, but you just figured it out as you went along and hoped it would be okay in the end.
This was actually more of a cover up job than a mend. I’d sat on a bench that I hadn’t realised had recently been painted and it left a brown mark. I thought I’d try a visible mend so I stitched a sashiko patch.
How I did these repairs:
The process was similar for both except the oval knee repair was patched underneath the fabric and the rectangular patch on the back of the jeans was obviously on top.
Cut patch of fabric to size
Pin fabric to the back / front of the area to be stitched
For the oval patch, using a washable fabric pen, I drew around small a cardboard knee patch template I’d made previously and used that to guide my stitches. I then continued sewing a smaller oval inside the original and so on until I got to the centre.
for the rectangular patch I sewed vertical stitches along the patch and then horizontal stitches across creating a pattern
I’m not sure this particular visible mend was the right approach for the rectangle. I do wonder if it looks like I’m trying to draw attention to the area so one day I may change it. When my husband first saw it he thought I’d stuck some gaffer tape to the seat of my jeans. As ever though, if it’s an opportunity to engage people in chats about mending clothes then that can’t be a bad thing.
My sewing kit for this repair:
Orange thread
Needle
Pins
Denim / cotton for patching
Washable fabric pen
Cardboard patch template
Next week on the mending kit: My kids break up from school for the summer hols tomorrow so I have no idea!
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