Visible Mending or Creative Repair ideas

Visible Mending on jeans with needle darning and a top with embroidery on moth holes

Visible mending or creative repair is the art of repairing clothing and textiles with the intention of the repair being seen, celebrating the fabric and history of the textiles.

The textile industry contributes largely to climate change; visible mending lengthens the life of fabrics, in turn caring for our environment and planet. As well as being good for the planet, repairing clothing and textiles saves money and is extremely satisfying. Creative repair techniques are also excellent to update those garments we all have that just aren't 'me' any more turning them into something you'll wear time and time again.

There are many, many ways to creatively repair clothing and textiles and this blog post will feature a few of them. One thing to note is you will be able to see the damaged area on the clothing or textile that needs repairing. What you won't be able to see is that the area around this damage is also weakened and so, when repairing fabrics, it's important to take the repair out slightly wider than the damaged area to ensure it lasts for a longer time. About 3 centimetres or so is sufficient.

fabric patch for visible mending

Patches are the easiest way to creatively repair clothing. They are good for any sized hole, including larger holes and especially good in high movement areas such as knees and elbows. You can embroider the patch or fold and manipulate it like the one in the image above or just use plain or patterned fabric. Patches can be placed on the top of the damage or underneath. It doesn't make a difference to the strength of the repair, the decision of whether to place the patch under or over the damage is down to personal choice.

Patches can be as plain or as decorated as you choose. Try and make this something you, or the wearer of the clothing, is happy with and will wear - use this as a way to add your own personality to the clothing.

Different fabrics have different weights, some thicker and heavier others lighter and thin. When repairing clothing you can add lightweight patches to heavier weight fabric without worry. Adding heavier weight patches to lightweight fabric can cause the garment to droop and look odd.

boro embroidery visible mending technique

Boro embroidery is a Japanese embroidery technique, with a fascinating history. You can read more about Boro in a blog post here. Boro as a visible mending technique is simple, relatively quick and excellent to use up those snippets and offcuts of fabric. Boro works on any size repair. Taking small pieces of fabric, lay them on the damaged area and cover with running stitch. Stitches can go in any direction and can be close together or further apart. Once you have stitched down one piece of fabric, select another and secure that with running stitch, repeating until the damaged area is covered. To make the repair more cohesive, you can extend the running stitch past the edge of the fabric onto the clothing.

visible repair technique for moth holes or small holes in garments

Moth holes and other tiny holes, for example from snags in a garden, lend themselves to visible mending really well. It's important to secure the edge of the hole to stop the fabric from fraying and the hole getting larger. In this image above the edge of the hole is sealed with an eyelet stitch, a bit like a satin stitch. This is achieved by bringing the needle up from the inside of the garment a few centimetres away from the hole and putting it back through the hole. Bring the needle back up from inside the garment right next to the previous stitch and back down through the hole. Keep repeating until the edge of the hole is covered with stitches.

You can add embroidery around this, as shown in the first image in the blog post, or even put fabric behind it.

self covered buttons with embroidery

Self covered buttons are a fabulous way to creatively repair a garment. The ones shown here have embroidery, however you can choose fabric you really like too. Buttons don't just have to be to fasten clothing - you can use them as embellishments or over a small stain too.

darning or needle weaving

Darning or needle weaving is such a good way to creatively repair clothing. It's especially good for knitwear but can be used on any clothing. There are many different types of darning, shown here is needle weaving where long stitches are used as a basis and then thread woven in and out of these.

You can be really creative here, adding in different colours or textures of thread to make patterns.

Visible mending is very mindful and so satisfying when you can wear clothing again that is really you. I'd love to see if you've done any visible mending - let me know in the comments below.