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Take a break from social media and learn how to sew.

By on August 23, 2021

Do you sew or mend your children’s clothes?  You might be balking at the idea but how does ¥5,000 for a hem repair sound? The cost of repair in Tokyo is expensive and would cost more than the clothes.

I am not, by any stretch, a penny pincher. For me, learning how to sew, mend holes is not just about putting repair money to better use but more  about mitigating the environmental impact of retail shopping.

Sewing may have increasingly fell out of fashion in other countries, but it is experiencing a surge of popularity today among millennials in Japan.

If you want to learn how to repair your own clothes, it would literally cost nothing except for the time to do it. By taking a break from social media, I was able to extend the life of many of my children’s knits and jeans using stitching techniques from Joyful Mending, a how-to book by Noriko Musumi.

Joyful mending is an 88-page book featuring 40 different projects with  easy-to-follow stitching methods and  moth hole patching. I really like the playful approach to decorating a hole as opposed to just trying to hide it.

Her second book  Mending With Love: Creative Repairs for Your Favorite Things released in March, offers more ideas on extending the life of any item at home from curtains and linens to seat covers.

We should learn how to mend or repurpose things.

The less frequent we shop, the better it is for the environment.

 

 

About Tracy Nakayama