Yesterday was wash day at the bungalow and today is mending day. I know the traditional routine puts ironing after wash day, but in all honesty, I don’t iron much. I favor the gently rumpled look of natural fibers dried in the wind. Mending day is an infrequent ritual and I take a whimsical approach to the task. I do not try to make neat invisible stitches, looking instead upon mending as an excuse to go a little bit wild with color and texture.
Today’s mending pile doesn’t afford me many opportunities for being whimsical. I have a pair of tea towels that need their hanging loops sewn back on. There is also a fleece mid-layer with a section of its binding coming off. I’ll go with bright blue thread on each.
My Gran liked to mend. She was frugal from habit more than from need. Gran wore cotton shirtwaist dresses with opaque stockings and black shoes that laced up and had sturdy two inch heels. Those dresses required sewing on the odd button, and the stockings were mended as needed. Throughout the house, table linens, bedding and even the cushions that the puppy chewed bore her small and neat stiches.
Mum, in the other hand, hated mending. She often said that she would damn her stockings rather than darn them.
I take the middle path. I would damn my holey stockings in an instant, if I actually wore stockings. I also mend things, mostly when the fabric is handwoven or it is a piece of beloved clothing. Lately, I have taken to mending almost everything. Shopping is difficult during the Great Pandemic, requiring that I buy things without trying them on. I still don’t know my body very well after loosing weight. Clothes that actually fit look impossibly small. Sometimes I need a medium to fit in the shoulders, but I wear a small or x-small in trousers. Since I am at home, seeing no one up close, why not mend if it gives me pleasure?
One tea towel only need a few catch stitches. If had let it go, the loop would have come loose in a week or two. The other one had the loop hanging by a thread. I stuffed it back in the hem and embroidered a star to hold it. I’m not sure what Gran would think of my approach to mending. I think it is jolly, and that’s what matters at the bungalow.
Tales from the jolly bungalow 