Journal

The Discreet Art of Mending

This week’s film is about mending, and about a book called The Cult of the Needle, edited by Flora Klickmann in 1913. It was published for readers of the Girl’s Own magazine, so it was aimed at young women setting up their own homes for the first time.

In the film I read from a chapter called The Mending Basket. It covers preventative mending, reinforcing stockings before they wear through, and dealing with the L-shaped tear you get when a skirt catches on something and you keep walking. My own mending pile is full of holey socks, and my own mending tends to be visible on purpose. This book has a completely different attitude. The aim was to mend so well that nobody could ever find the darn.

Watch the film here:

Below are photographs of the pages I read from, in case you’d like to see the original text and the illustrations that go with it.