“Visible Mending”: 50 Times Folks Didn’t Give Up On Their Favorite Things And Made Them Even Better (New Pics)

These took such a while, but I'm so happy with the end result. I reinforced several thin spots and puckering areas with patches underneath then added lots of embellishments. I like to think of this as my ode to Monet's water lillies.

My son was in an accident where someone ran a red light and hit him on his motorcycle. three surgeries and a month later I got his personal effects including his Joyce manor shirt. I washed it up and stitched up where the EMTs cut through his clothing.

The blue and possibly the brocade are "original", and everything else is mending. Some darns match, some don't, and the brown in the middle is quite decorative, but it's darning too. The museum notes indicate that something about the construction suggests this may have originally been an adult garment, which was then cut down for a child. And then mended, and mended again, most likely passed down to someone else and someone else and someone after that. This is YEARS of wear & loving mending, and on a small garment that means no one could have worn it their whole life, so we're seeing the history of multiple people who cared about this garment, and cared for it, and kept using it. Fantastic.