I like to joke that I majored in climate anxiety. An ecology degree has done nothing for my job prospects, and an unquenchable curiosity about how the modern world works does very little to ease any of the existential ennui I live with day after day. In order to cope, I tend to go out of my way to “vote with my dollar” for sustainability but, admittedly, my efforts feel pointless or based in other societal issues that can be neither escaped nor avoided. The one exception to this is mending.
I’ve discussed it before (see my DIY Wardrobe post here). The act of taking your clothes, with holes, with runs, with splitting seams, and stitching them back together with colorful thread and patches. Creating something wholly new, wholly yours. A basic sewing kit with needle, thread, and scissors can be obtained for $3-ish at any gas station or convenience store. I do most of my embroidery without a hoop, using fabric from scraps of t-shirts and jeans I could not repair. Each time I patch and stitch, I grant new life to a material that would otherwise end up in the garbage. All it takes is some time, a little bit of meditation in my day. I’ve worn half-patched pieces for weeks before I finished them — all my clothes exist as works in progress, provided I like them enough to patch up.
A thousand free sewing tutorials exist online, bags and bags of old findings can be pilfered from thrift stores or your childrens’ old clothes. Its a little bit of time spent with your clothes, appreciating them as though they were one of a kind until they really truly are. This time and care stands in stark opposition to the incessant chatter of fast fashion, tossing in your face a thousand poorly made pieces of clothing forged in the fires of sweatshops and guzzling gallons of water. What isn’t sold in a month creates a mountain in a landfill somewhere in the global south, and the people living in the shadow of that mountain create more to feed the monster for a barely survivable living. Anything I can do to extract myself from this process, even a little, serves as a small relief.
And, as a bonus, I get a lot of compliments on my overalls.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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