Notions: Reviving Textiles Today with Techniques from Yesterday

The crafters who came before us were certainly aware of the time, labor, and materials necessary to create clothing and household linens. And they treated their handmade items with care: darning, repurposing, and passing them down across generations. In 2024, sustainability may be what motivates us to look to the remedies of past makers to restore and reuse textiles, and repairing old fabric can also renew our respect for the original producer, whether they labored by hand or by machine.

Keep your mending tools close at hand with this roll kit from Dawn Cook Ronningen.

Our ancestors were resourceful at breathing new life into old garments—and many of their methods are still applicable today. In these pages, Dawn Cook Ronningen’s soldiers’ mending kit will help you keep your supplies close at hand; and Kaffe Fassett fashions useful and beautiful objects that you can make from knitted swatches and yarn scraps. Angela K. Schneider’s visible-mending woven patch provides a fix while adding a personal touch to a cherished garment, and Meg Swansen offers a practical way to rescue a well-loved mitten with a knitted patch—both ingenious ideas for you to try.

Deanna Hall West finishes the silk-ribbon embroidery series with Fuchsias.

Sometimes the best repurposing occurs when we revisit worthwhile ideas from the past. Barbara G. Walker revolutionized twentieth-century knitting with her compilations of resurrected antique knitting patterns, which inspired her to create hundreds of new patterns. Elettra Wiedemann, along with her mother Isabella Rossellini, is spreading the back-to-basics small fiber farm message as an antidote to fast fashion and as a path to a greener future.

If we learn to appreciate the workmanship and craftsmanship that went into our textiles, we might instead view worn and frayed items as artistic opportunities for revival and reuse. Let’s stop perceiving signs of wear as imperfections, and let’s move forward together by following the wisdom of those clever stitchers from the past.

Pat Olski is the editor of PieceWork magazine.

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