Visible Medning Review

Much has been said about Visible Mending:  Artful Stitchery to Repair and Refresh Your Favorite Things, by Jenny Wilding Cardon. It's started a mending movement!

As I am forever mending jeans, I thought this book would add some excitement to the chore. But it is much more than that. I found this a handbook for challenging your creativity in a new functional turn.

To begin with....yes, the beginning is the best part of this book! Only a page, but artfully challenging you to "see the beauty in the broken."

From the start Visible Mending is more than a how-to book. Each chapter: 

• Boro
• Hand Embroidery
• PATCHES (my favorite)
• Darning (new to me)
• Mending by Machine (free motion)

carries a new philosophy for celebrating scars "as an opportunity for one-of-a-kind creativity."

Of course, each chapter also shares insights on the unique tools and skills needed for it's particular technique. But more importantly, Visible Mending shows you how to look beyond the skill lessons to the catalog of

1. what type of blemish is best repaired with that technique
2. what fabrics can each technique be applied to.

Visible Mending could have as easily been organized by tear, hole, stain.....

or sweater, denim, t-shirt, linen, see! 

Here is my first project inspired by Visible Mending:

Yes, it is a jeans patch, ringed with Boro stitching :) Now instead of a tear, it's a statement! Instead of working to hide my work, I spent just as much time making something to show! See how it works?

By the time you get to the end of the book, I guarantee you'll be searching your wardrobe for old clothes to turn into statement pieces. And the next time you spill on your new outfit, you'll be thinking, "oooh, now I get to mend this:)"