The four people at my table had their heads down, needles and threads in their hands. Behind me, books like How to Fix Almost Everything, Basic Electricity, and, fittingly, Successful Shelves and Built-ins filled one shelf in a shelving unit full of everything from surge protectors and spare keyboards to at least four different types of inductors. Down the lime-green wall, sewing machines weighed down another shelf.
Across the room, more people sat around tables next to woodsaws and clamps. They weren’t working with wood, but on shirts and pants.
This was the Capitol Hill Tool Library’s monthly mending circle. On the first Sunday of each month, anyone can bring any textile items that need fixing into the workshop. Volunteers are on hand to show you what to do. No experience required.
I went to the mending circle armed with zero sewing knowledge and an armful of clothes. I left with a sense of self-reliance previously foreign to me.
“So,” I said to my tablemates, “the knot in the thread? I just tie a knot?”
In spite of having a mother who once handmade my baby blankets and at least one Halloween catsuit, I never learned to sew. According to Clare, the mending circle’s founder, only 50 years ago many people sewed their own clothes. Not anymore. The skill isn’t as universal anymore.
Clare started the mending circle in 2022 as a way for her to meet sewing friends. It became more than that. Under her stewardship, the mending circle grew to a monthly mainstay where she could equip people with real life skills. Except, most of the people who showed up didn’t know how to sew. That didn’t bother Clare. “The most important part of that work we’re doing is giving people skills,” Clare says.
Clare’s no longer part of it—not for any reason other than she moved to Ballard, which is basically dying in Capitol Hill terms. She now helps with Sustainable Ballard’s mending group and one at the Ballard Food Bank.
The act of mending clothes is radical to her. “Because it doesn’t make financial sense,” Clare says. “You could just buy a new jacket for 20 bucks. It’s almost antiestablishment.”
I suppose I have been very “establishment.” When my clothes fall apart, I throw them to the back of my closet, or throw them away. Then, the pocket on my favorite jacket ripped. It’s an article of clothing—a vintage denim chore jacket—I’m certain I won’t be able to find again. But I’m not preservation-minded. I can’t stop wearing it. Hence the mending circle.
The other people were also trying to save their clothes: Marco sewed a patch into his new shoes because they were slightly too big. Will’s favorite shirt—an eight-year-old flannel—split down the entire armpit. He could fit his head in the hole with room to spare. “Does anyone know how to choose a needle?” he asked. Vanessa, who sat at the end of my table, started coming to the mending circle a few months ago and is now a regular. She learned to sew there, which is helpful since she has “the bad habit of wearing clothes probably long after I should have gotten rid of them,” she says. Today, she coerced her friend Thyme to come so she could mend their clothes. She’d run out of her own things to mend.
They both sewed holes shut in two matching pairs of Thyme’s sweatpants. “I have to specifically buy athletic-cut pants because my butt is too big,” they said. Their butt is always busting holes into their pants. (According to mending circle volunteers, the dreaded groin rip is the most common mending project.) Thyme was new to sewing. Learning the skill excited them. They’re a furry and often have to ask their mom to fix their two fursuits when things fall apart.
Most people had a passing familiarity with needles and thread. I stared blankly at the threaded needle in my hand. Where do I go from here? Katherine, who had sat down across from me, busy with her own clothes, lent her expertise. “My grandmother always told me to do two knots,” she said, demonstrating how to tie a double knot. She learned to sew from two different grandmothers. “They didn’t talk to each other at all,” she says.
Following Katherine’s lead, I attempted a double knot. Except I really didn’t grasp what she’d shown me, and I felt bad asking again, so I pretended I’d gotten it.
A seat down from me, Thyme interrupted. “I heard the knot question, but I didn’t hear the answer. How many times did you go around?”
“So, I ended up making three little knots,” I said, examining my now-bumpy thread. “I’m hoping they’ll go on top of each other to make one big knot, but they haven’t done that yet.” Katherine demonstrated again for both of us. I got it that time.
Overseeing this exchange, the volunteer coordinator, Saralyn, commented on it to another volunteer: “I always love when people come in not as volunteers, but they end up helping other people. One of my goals for [the] mending circle is to bring people together.” And she had.
Katherine came here today because she’d had “a brief crisis” in December. “My younger sister sat down and was like, ‘Here’s a list of things in your area. Go to them,’” she told me. “I think this might be legitimately the first thing that I’ve gone to—which is sad.” Vanessa and Thyme jumped in. “It’s only been two months!” Thyme said. “Don’t worry, I only started getting out of the house for realsies a few weeks ago,” Vanessa said.
We all chatted for the three hours the mending circle spanned—which is about how long it took me to sew my pocket back together, as well as a ripped armpit hole on another shirt. Other people came in with their worn clothes, picked up the supplied needles and thread, and set to work. One person came in to make anti-ICE whistle packets. She took a break to darn a sock.
“I always feel like I get worn down [by the world],” Saralyn said, over the hum of conversation and the occasional buzz of a sewing machine. “Then I come to mending circle. On a large scale, things are stressful. On a small scale, I remember, ‘I can fix this.’”
The patch I sewed to bolster my jacket is not beautiful. So far, the patch is holding and the jacket functions, but the lines are uneven and the stitches are wonky. I feel proud nonetheless. I like that even though it’s imperfect, I can see the passage of time on this garment I love. I like that I did it myself. And I feel comfortable knowing there is a place I can go when the patch inevitably falls off, and next time I will sew it on even better.
For her column Play Date, Nathalie Graham immerses herself in Seattle’s subcultures. Got a fun group? Invite her: PlayDate@thestranger.com!
