A Beginner's Guide to Visible Mending by Shelley Zetuni (Pre-order)

Available for pre-order, publication date is 15th September.

Bring new life to old clothes or charity-shop finds and create your sustainable wardrobe.

Learn techniques such as darning, embroidery, needle-felting, applique and binding.

Repairing your old clothes is a brilliant way of adding personality to your wardrobe, is good for the environment and saves money. Perfect for complete beginners, this handbook introduces a variety of mending techniques and shows you how to make unique projects with your new skills.

First, there is a guide to all the tools you’ll need, from hand-sewing needles to darning discs and mushrooms. Then, explore different methods of mending, with detailed step-by-step guides, followed by easy projects to put your skills into practice. Learn how to create vibrant patterns with darning, strengthen and embellish with sashiko-style stitching, cover stains with needle-felting and handmade patches, and much more. Throughout, you'll find advice on choosing colours, threads and materials, and how to incorporate a visible mend into the existing style of a garment or use it to give the item a complete refresh.

The 20 beautiful projects include adding needle-felted embellishments to a scarf, repairing a denim jacket with sashiko, patching a hole in fine silk fabric and adding colourful darning to a jumper.

Shelley teaches her Darning Workshop and Sashiko Inspired Visible Mending for Denim here at Ray Stitch. You can find her upcoming classes on the guest teachers page.