Tagged: mending

Apr 10

Bath Artisan Market

 

This month’s Bath Artisan Market at Green Park Station on Sunday 14th April has a Make Do & Mend theme, and the Big Mend will be there all day with a pop-up mending workshop.

If you’re in Bath and happen to have something needing a new button attached, a seam fixed, or maybe a hole darned, come on down! We’ll show you how. And it’s FREE! More about the Big Mend mending socials over here.

This Sunday’s market also brings you the Big Bath Clothes Swap, screenprinting for the kids (c/o Happy Inkers), and plenty of local gourmet food. Now we just need the Great British spring weather to co-operate! If you aren’t coming by public transport, by bike or on foot, there’s free parking for an hour and a half in the Sainsbury’s and Homebase car parks.

Bath Artisan Market Make Do and Mend Day

 

If you’re on Twitter, follow Bath Artisan Market for latest news and updates. This market happens every second Sunday of the month. Hope to see you this Sunday!

PS I’d welcome some willing volunteers to help with the stall. If you can spare half an hour on Sunday, do get in touch. No previous darning experience necessary!

 

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Posted in Bath places, Grand days out, Mending, Thrift, vintage buttons, Vintage fabrics, Vintage sewing machines

Mar 23

Green Living Fair

 

I’ll be taking a pop-up mending workshop to the Green Living Fair in Bath tomorrow, Sunday 24th March, 10am to 4pm. If you’re within striking distance and fancy trying your hand at Swiss darning or adding some really beautiful patches to your favourite jacket or cardi, drop by the Big Mend stall any time between 10am and 4pm. You’re very welcome to bring items that need mending to get free advice on how best to repair them. 

Green Living Fair: 24th March in Green Park Station, Bath

Green Living Fair: 24th March in Green Park Station, Bath

 

You’ll also find 40 other green community organisations, local businesses and installers running activities, selling their produce and products, and sharing their expertise.

You can make your own pedal powered fruit smoothie, pet the pygmy goat (12pm-2pm), bring your bike and get it checked out for free at the Dr Bike clinic, have a go at eco arts and crafts, and much more.

There will be a marquee of topical talks running throughout the day covering home, energy and environmental themes.

You can book a 30 minute appointment to talk to an architect in the Ask the Architect Zone to discuss plans, schemes and dreams for large or small projects and The Royal Institute of British Architects’ 21st Century Living Exhibition, featuring images of fantastic local architectural achievements, will also be on show.

It’s all under cover so no need to worry about the weather!

The Green Living Fair is part of the Bath Green Homes project which features over 20 events throughout March & April including talks, activities and workshops which aim to help people make their homes warmer, greener and cheaper to run. There will be an Open Homes Weekend on 13th & 14th April showcasing inspiring examples of energy efficient homes across Bath.

To find out more you can:

Hope to see you there!

 

 

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Posted in Bath places, Grand days out, Mending

Mar 01

Sylvia’s marvelous darner

Sylvia Darning by Harold Gilman [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Sylvia Darning by Harold Gilman, 1917

 

I keep my eyes peeled for interesting images of darning. This painting by British impressionist Harold Gilman (1876-1919)  is currently my favourite. ‘Sylvia Darning’ is dated 1917. I love it’s palpable coolth (is that a word? It should be). I don’t know much at all about Gilman, other than what Wikipedia tells me, but would love to find out more. Doesn’t that vase really sing out from the middle of the table? If you’d like to see the original canvas and soak up the colours, I’m afraid you’ll have to schlep to the Yale Center for British Art. It’s a bit more of an effort for me than Rode in Somerset where Gilman was born; that’s just 21 miles away.

I’m also a partial to old darning implements (you would never have guessed!). Here is one I acquired recently: the “Marvel Darner”. Excuse the violent orange background but I got a little carried away.

Marvel Darner

Marvel Darner

 

The Marvel darner measures just a couple of inches across and is effectively a miniature velvet board with densely packed metal wires set into a small wooden frame. The idea is that it grips the holey sock, giving the mender a stable base on which to work. No stretching, gaping sock hole. How marvelous! At least, that’s the idea. I don’t know how well it works yet as I haven’t tested it. The instructions, on a small paper label glued to the top, read:

The “MARVEL DARNER” CORNELL’S PATENT

DIRECTIONS.

Push left hand into garment.

Place gripping surface direct on worn part.

Keeping exact size & shape, turn inside out and darn in usual way.

Never push darner into stocking or sleeve.

Pat. No. 159770.

PRICE 1/6

 

Marvel Darner label

Marvel Darner label

 

I so wanted to imagine that Sylvia was using one of these when she sat for that painting, but the painting precedes the darner by three years, so it can’t be; Edwin List Cornell filed his patent entitled Improvements in and relating to darners on 29th March 1920. Here’s how he summed up his darning innovation:

‘A darning-block is provided with a surface made up of the ends 4′ of wires or the like. The wires may be mounted upon a backing and secured in a recess cut in the head of the block. In place of recessing the block, the wires may be surrounded with a ring secured to the block.’

The patent was finally published a year later on 10th March 1921. I’ve also seen aluminium versions of the Marvel, which I assume are later than the wooden one, but that’s my conjecture, judging by the typography. One of the boxes for the aluminium version quotes the manufacturer as:

 E Cornell & Sons, 54 Lower Thames Street, London, EC5.

So what is this ominous notice from the The London Gazette of 19th May 1925?

MARVEL DARNER COMPANY Limited.

NOTICE is hereby given, pursuant to section
188 of the Companies (Consolidation) Act,
1908, that a Meeting of the creditors of the above
named Company will be held at Chancery-lane
Station Chambers, High Holborn. London, W.C. 1,
on Thursday, the 21st day of May, 1925, at
2 o’clock.
(094) J. L. GOODWIN, Liquidator.

Presumably this isn’t Cornell‘s company? Surely he was trading as ‘E Cornell & Sons’? His product explicitly includes ‘Cornell’ in the name. Could the Marvel Darner Company Ltd have been making this  ’Marvel’ darning product, a sewing machine attachment which crops up in an Australian newspaper advertisement in October of the same year? Or did Edwin have a darning company which ran into insolvency and then resumed production under another company later? Mysterious. What do you think?

I haven’t been able to discover much more about inventor Cornell, beyond the clue in that company name that he had a family. He continued to tinker with domestic equipment after he developed his darner, filing the patent Improved device for separating cream from milk (January 1932), and Improvements appertaining to domestic pans and the like (April 1935). Other than those patents, I can find no further information about him. Harold Gilman had died of Spanish flu way back in 1919, and heaven knows who Sylvia was or what ever became of her. Some days you really wish you had a time machine. Improved, of course.

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Posted in Mending, Vintage haberdashery

Jan 07

The Big Mend in Bradford-on-Avon

 

Mrs. Sew-and-Sew darns

I’m delighted to announce that 2013 brings with it a new monthly incarnation of the Big Mend, now in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire.

The Bradford-on-Avon mending social meets the first Tuesday of the month at Jumble Jelly in Silver Street. First meeting: Tuesday 8th January. Drop in any time from 10am till noon. As is usual for the Big Mend sessions, there’s no charge to attend – just grab your mending and turn up. The Big Mend is really about sharing skills, finding new ways to repair clothing, and having a good old natter. Mending materials will be available to purchase, if needed, but there’s no obligation to buy anything at all.

If you’re closer to Bath, our original mending social still meets at the Museum of Bath at Work in Camden Works, Julian Road, on the last Wednesday of the month, 7-9pm. Next meet-up: 30th January.

Would you be interested in setting up a mending social in your area? If so, please contact eirlysATscrapianaDOTcom for further details.

 

 

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Posted in Bath places, Mending, Thrift

Oct 22

Scrap of the week #24

 

Gone so long and no excuse note. Sorry, the dog ate my blog posts.

I’ve been fully absorbed by a handful of projects, one of which is guiding my eldest son through the serpentine process of applying for university. If you’re doing likewise, my sympathies. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

I’m also having persistent difficulty getting Flickr and WordPress to communicate with each other via Safari. Anyone else had the same problem? And how did you solve it? At the moment I’m having to compose posts on other family members’ computers. Very meh.

Anyway, I finally have a Scrap of the Week to show you. It’s a piece of sweet floral barkcloth, part of a pair of curtains (complete with gathered pelmet) which a good friend spotted for me recently. Not being a textiles expert, I’m guessing 1950s, but please correct me if you are able. The set is half rotten and (one assumes) about to shred to ribbons. Therefore, I haven’t dared wash it yet, though it’s a little grotty and stained and deserves laundering. I may give it a gentle soak with something benign in the bathtub, in the same way that I washed this.

But just look at the darning! Not exactly expert but determined.

Darned barkcloth curtain

There are several areas of repair. The story they tell! Somebody really loved their floral curtains. Have made no plans for this lot yet. What would you do with it? About 4 metres in all. More pictures over on Flickr.

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Posted in Mending, Scrap of the week, Thrift, Vintage fabrics

Sep 18

Scrap of the week #23

 

London Fashion Week is just ending. It’s not something I pay close attention to at all as I’m obviously not a dedicated follower of fashion; if you’ve met me you’ll know that the way I dress is almost 100% sale or second-hand, frequently with a subtle got-dressed-in-the-dark twist. But on Saturday I met someone who made me think hard about fashion and how little we, the end consumers, know about our clothes and how they are made.

I was running a mending event in Wiltshire when a man wandered over and picked up this piece of denim from my heap of scraps.

IMG_1898

Sandblasted denim scrap

 

The scrap came from a pair of my youngest son’s cast-off Gap jeans. He’d successively holed, ripped, then outgrown those jeans, and I eventually cut them up for patchwork. This scrap now sits in a small cardboard suitcase of denim pieces which I lug to the Big Mend and back every month, just in case anyone wants a worn, soft denim patch to repair their jeans with.

The man looked closely at the scrap and, after a moment of scrutiny, said in a thick Middle-Eastern accent: “Yes. Sandblasted.”

He then went on to tell me that he had worked in a Turkish jeans factory in the 1990s, sandblasting garments to fade them fashionably. The work had damaged his lungs. Permanently. Living and sleeping in the sandblasting part of the factory (not unusual for migrant workers) hadn’t helped. He only retains about half his original lung function. It is not a reversible condition. Many of his co-workers and family members have died of the lung disease silicosis. Sandblasting is such a pernicious process that it was eventually banned in Turkey a few years ago. But the fashion for the worn jean continues, and so does sandblasting – but in other less regulated places, such as Bangladesh.

The fashion in the West for the pre-worn is curious. Why, when we can’t bear to allow our bodies to show any vestiges of age, do we want our clothes to look prematurely old? I can remember the time when all jeans were as stiff and unyielding as they were deep blue. You had to work at wearing them in, like a stout pair of leather boots or a Brooks bike saddle. Fading, similarly, was achieved only with time, wear and washing. But on the upside, in contrast to most of the ones you get today,  your jeans lasted intact for years. I wondered if I’d imagined the former ruggedness of jeans (a kind of false denim-memory syndrome) until I found an old scrap of a pair I’d owned as a teenager. I’ve kept it, absurdly, in the materials lugged from home to home over the years – retained because it still bears my embroidery stitches (a bit of belated Flower Power). That denim is truly rugged. They really do not make them like that anymore.

That said, a few companies (like the Hiut Denim Company) now specialise in making robust denim jeans once again, jeans with a conscientious provenance too, but at a price. Perhaps this is the right price, the price free of needless exploitation and pointless disease. Very nice if you happen to have £130+ available to spend on jeans. But what about those who can’t afford it? What to do?

One thing is to learn to detect the sandblasted finish and simply not buy it. Should you even buy sandblasted jeans second-hand? A moot point. The charity shop can seem for clothes what the money-launderer is for immoral earnings, displacing the context, cleansing the sins of production. But, of course, it doesn’t really.

Another thing you can do is ask your favourite jeans manufacturer/s whether they still use sandblasted denim. If so, where has it come from?

And finally, you can consult one of the organisations working to eradicate sandblasting.

I felt rather humbled to learn so belatedly about the distress caused by those distressed jeans, to hear first-hand from a sufferer about the perils of sandblasted denim. It’s not the price I wanted anyone to pay, not for a pair of jeans.

 

 

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Posted in Fashion, Scrap of the week, Textile history

Aug 09

The latch ladder mender

 

The Latch Ladder Mender

The Latch Ladder Mender

 

Here’s a little vintage gizmo I used for the first time at last month’s the Big Mend in Bath. Someone brought a fine-mesh knitted cardigan with a popped seam and a little ladder, so we used this old stocking-repair device to remedy the latter.

It’s a cute little tool – basically a tiny version of rug-making latch-hook – and works well, though using it requires youthfully sharp eyesight and is a little fiddly (opening and closing the latch), but not so hard. I’m sure that, as the packet firmly indicates, practice would make perfect. A small crochet hook would have done the job almost as well.

Ladder mender

Teeny weeny latch hook

 

See how tiny it is?

Quaintly, the instructions (printed on the brown paper envelope) advise to stretch your stocking repair over an egg-cup. In case you can’t see the pictures, here’s what the packet says:

 

THE LATCH LADDER MENDER.

Instructions.

1. Stretch ladder across eggcup or hand.

2. Insert hook behind end of ladder to catch up last loop.

3. Work needle up and down and pick up dropped stitches.

4. Fasten off last stitch with silk and tie inside stocking.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.


Got any tips for repairing ladders in knitted garments? Or for mending modern stockings or tights? Have you ever seen one of these old ladder repairers? Or something similar? Do share!

 

 

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Posted in Mending, Vintage haberdashery

Jun 22

June mending

 

It was delightful that so many people turned up to May’s meeting of the Big Mend, especially considering that the weather was so sultry. This month’s session is Wednesday June 27th at the Museum of Bath at Work and (rain or shine) we’ll be making the most of the long midsummer evening light, kicking off at the slightly later time of 7.30 and wrapping up at 9.30pm. All welcome! Just drop in any time with your mending bag.

There will definitely be jeans patching this time (there’s a wonderful example of this over on Tom of Holland’s blog which I’d highly recommend perusing), and I’ve been experimenting with woven yarn patches (see below) as an applied alternative to darning knitted garments. I’ll bring those along for a bit of show-and-tell. But feel free to bring anything at all textile-related that you want to repair (popped seams, burst buttons, droopy hems) and we’ll help you to fix it. Some basic tools and materials are on hand but try to bring what you know you’ll need  (patch fabric or toning thread, for example).

Woven patch test

woven patch looking for an elbow

 

More details about the Big Mend over here. There’s now a Flickr group you can join and post images of your mending triumphs or disasters and find images to inspire. Do take a look.

Serious menders will probably already be aware that the UK’s first mending research symposium convenes towards the end of the month in the Lake District; Mend*rs kicks off with a call to arms, a first National Mending Day on Friday 29th June. Count me in! Alas, it looks like I won’t be able to make it to the physical conference but will certainly be mending with the assembled gathering in spirit next Friday. A big thank you to Tom for telling me about the event.

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Bath places, Mending, Thrift

May 27

Mending night at the museum

Darning tools

Well, in all the bustle I forgot to post about our first meeting of the Big Mend back in April. It was busy! So busy that I forgot to take pictures, but the lovely Nina behind So House Proud helped me out by taking snaps and blogging about it. Thank goodness. There was much patching of jeans and attaching of buttons. A weaver, a milliner and a textiles designer were amongst the assembled menders, and it was exciting to have their varied perspectives. Of course, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat, and the mending group really comes into its own when many minds offer alternative, equally viable approaches to a mend.

It became clear pretty quickly that we were going to outgrow the lovely confines of Crockadoodledo and so I’ve been casting around for a more capacious venue for our next mending get-together on 30th May. I’m delighted to announce that the Museum of Bath at Work has kindly offered to host us upstairs, where light floods in through the lovely long windows, so do drop by with your mending between 7 and 9pm. If you haven’t visited the museum, here’s a golden opportunity, though you’ll only see a small portion of it. The building’s first incarnation was as a Real Tennis court in 1777. For more details, see the Big Mend page.

Back to the mending, Nina also brought a bit of challenge to our first meeting, and I’d love to hear your take on how you’d go about fixing it. This is the back of her favourite jacket. It is a little small and hence ripped right between the shoulder blades.

To mend or not to mend?

An awkward spot to repair. And likely to rip again. So I was wondering about inserting an inverted pleat of new material. What would you do? If you need to see more images, hop over to Flickr. Would love to hear what you think.

The Big Mend at the Museum of Bath at Work, Wednesday 30th May, 7-9pm. No entrance fee, so just come along with your mending! Sewing tools will be on hand to use and refreshments will be available.

 

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Posted in Bath places, Mending, Uncategorized

Apr 11

The big mend

You’ll have noticed that I’m a bit of a fan of mending – in theory, if not always in practice. Like everyone else, I seem to have an ever-growing pile of things with holes or without buttons, waiting to be rescued from the clothing version of limbo.

Well, I’m thrilled to announce a new project happening very close to home which will help to redress that problem. It’s called the Big Mend and it aims to get Bath (or the small corner of it in which I live) mending its ways. Imagine a great big sociable gaggle of people sewing on buttons, darning, nibbling snacks and gossiping. That should be it. There will be sewing tools on hand to use, free of charge, and other helpful items to purchase, should you wish. Or you are welcome to bring along your own bits and pieces. If your problem is carving out the time and space, hopefully we can give you that. If your problem is trepidation or insufficient skills, we aim to be able to help you with that too; if there isn’t someone there who will know how to fix your beloved vintage dress, we will know where to look to find out.

Our first meeting of the Big Mend will be on Wednesday 24th April at Crockadoodledo, Larkhall from 7-9pm. You’re very welcome to drop in any time you like (though it would be advisable not to arrive at quarter to 9 if you have a long hem to repair). Entry is free.

Huge thanks are due to Caroline Harris, local author on matters thrifty (amongst many other talents) who encouraged me to pursue this idea. Curiously enough, she provided the  inspirational spark for the project when she wrote an article for Bath Life back in May 2009.

Caroline 's Bath Life article

 

In her article, Caroline rued the parlous state of her three pairs of jeans, and wished for what she called a ‘mending amnesty… an occasion where you can bring along all that forlorn forgotten sewing and do it in company, with a chat and a drink’. I read that and thought: That’s me! I can do that! And here it is, three years later, after a few false starts;  I  actually conjured up the artwork way back then (see it propped against this antique sewing machine?) but have managed to sit on it ever since. I just hope that Caroline’s favourite jeans are still salvageable.

The Big Mend takes place on the last Wednesday of the month from 7-9pm. May’s event (30th May) takes place at the Museum of Bath at Work in Julian Road. Entry is free, so just turn up!

 

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Posted in Classes, Mending, Patchwork, Rag, Thrift, Vintage haberdashery

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