Learn to repair your favorite jeans to extend their life, and reduce your environmental impact!

In this workshop, we will spend most of our time demonstrating and working on our mending projects with the assistance and encouragement of skilled mender, Daniela. There will be some supplies/materials for people to take with them, so they can continue to work on their project. Needles, pins, thread, scissors, and fabric for patching will be provided.

We will talk a little about:

1. Wastefulness and worker abuse in the garment industry and how mending- instead or replacing- a garment is a way to show respect and gratitude to all the people and resources it took to create it in the first place.

2. How we can empower ourselves to care for our clothes and make them last and also express ourselves creatively through our own mending styles.

3. Different mending techniques and material choices and what is likely to work best for each mend, depending on the fabric type and location/cause of the mend.

Please bring:

Students should bring a clean* pair of non-stretch** jeans or jean-jacket they would like to mend.
* When we wear our jeans, they stretch out a bit. Washing brings them back to their more neutral shape, which will make it easier to get the patch to lay flat on the garment.

** Look for a 100% cotton fiber content, not 2 or 3% lycra. The stretchy jeans are still possible to mend, but it's a bit more time consuming. Let me know if you need to bring stretchy jeans, so I can be prepared with appropriate fabric for patches.

If anyone has fabric or other supplies they would like to use, they are welcome to bring and use that, too!