Visible mending - Or how do I take care of that ink stain?

I own a mustard yellow and green dress made of linen. It's a unique design and I like to wear it in the spring and summer. Of course, a couple years ago I managed to get three ink stains on the chest area where someone couldn't help but notice. I washed the dress at home using various methods of removing stains. None of them worked. I took it to the dry cleaners and they couldn't remove the stains either. Then the dress sat there in my closet, but I really didn't want to get rid of it.  

Then I came across the article on visible mending I mentioned in my first blog post. I became slightly obsessed with visible meaning, reading everything I could cough up on the internet. Then I realized what I could with that dress that had been sitting in my closet.  I knew how to embroider daisies when I was seven. I should be able to do it again in my forties. 

I went to the local fabric store and stared at the various skeins of embroidery floss until I found one that matched with the color scheme. I also bought an embroidery hoop.  And then I Googled how to embroider daisy chains because, in the forty years between 2019 and when I learned to embroider, I had forgotten. I stitched over the stains and added more design elements. In the end the embroidery looked as if it had meant to be there.

My skills today are a bit better than they were in 2019. If I had to do it over again, I would have added a stabilizer to the fabric such as a light interfacing or some other lightweight fabric. However, even with my imperfect stitching, I could wear the dress again and I extended the use of the dress by a season or two. What if we all did this with our clothes?

First post

A picture from about 1977 that includes my mother, my brother and me wearing a dress my mother made

I am the daughter of immigrants from India. My mother grew up at a time when women were gaining more opportunity.  She went to college and then graduate school. She also learned  "domestic arts" such as sewing and knitting. She made many of my clothes when I was little and before she went to work as a computer programmer. I completed my first embroidery kit maybe in second grade. When I was in junior high my mother taught me to sew. I made many of my clothes when I was a teenager, but then I set it aside for nearly 30 years, not intentionally, but by happenstance. Every once in a blue moon I would take out my sewing machine, but it did not occur me to use it very much. 

Then in 2019, I read an article on visible mending in our local newspaper.  I will write more about that later. The article piqued my interest. That led me to take a couple classes at our local sewing store, Treadle Yard Goods. Then the pandemic hit. I made dozens of masks to donate. I made dozens of masks for our family.  I wrestled with my sewing machine before finally figuring out how to adjust the bobbin tension. The sewing machine has been on our kitchen table since then. 

Did you know that  according to the BBC in 2017, Americans threw away more than 13 million metric tonnes of fabric?  Fabric is difficult to recycle, but it can be repurposed. This blog will explore how I am doing that.