What Ever Happened to Darning…(and other thoughts about clothing)

I’m currently reading a very interesting book, called Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter. I will have more to say about this book in a future post, but for now I just want to say that it’s gotten me to thinking about (among other things) clothing. Or more precisely the fabrics that our clothing is made of, and what happens to it when we’re no longer wearing it.

Then this week I ran across a post by an artist in the U.K. named Kate, whose main medium is “reclaimed fabric.” She begins the post, which is called  “Mending Clothes as an Act of Revolution,” by saying “I have often wondered when it was that Western society collectively decided that visibly mended clothes were a mark of reduced status. Of a life worth less. Where a patch or a darn was certainly not acceptable in polite company…”

I have wondered this too! I certainly remember seeing my mother and both of my grandmothers darning socks all the time I was growing up. They would be sitting and chatting, and one (or both) of them would be mending a sock stretched over the left hand while they sewed with the right.

And though I have never taken up the habit myself I have always felt kind of guilty about just tossing holey socks into the garbage. It just doesn’t seem right.

And in fact, in many ways, it isn’t right. That most of us do so now is just one more symptom of a world in which we aren’t thinking enough about what happens to all the things we toss into the garbage once they’re out of our sight.

Because I know it isn’t right to just throw my holey socks away, I usually try to first use them as rags; but the truth is that socks just do not make great rags: they are not tee-shirts!

There’s plenty of advice about how to darn socks on the internet. This gives me a bit of hope that maybe there is more darning going on in the world than it seems.

But is it, though? Is anyone out there still darning their socks? Do you? Do you know anyone who does?

Leaving you with those questions for this week…and hoping to hear from some darning enthusiasts!

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher. She is coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home and author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You.