I recently finished wrote a blog post about doing visible mending to a pair of my jeans. I learned a lot and I wanted to write about what I learned from this project. It made me think about the differences between starting a project as a total beginner vs doing something you have done for years. It also made me realize how differently a beginner would approach a project than someone who is more experienced. Before I started this project, I had not done much hand stitching and hadn’t done any sashiko mending. It made me realize that when you have done something for years you don’t really have to think about where to start. As a total beginner, you often don’t know where to start. At first, I certainly didn’t know where to start on this project.
I finally found some tutorials and was able to get a start on it. As I did this project, I had a lot of questions. For example, I wasn’t sure what fabric to use for patching, I also found some old embroidery thread and I wasn’t sure if it was usable or not. I also didn’t know if my scissors would work or if I should get fabric scissors. Maybe if you have done this for a while, these may sound like obvious questions but not to a total beginner like myself. I asked for advice on the Thrifty Knitters Group on Ravelry. I was a little nervous about asking for advice but they were so kind , helpful and supportive. It made a big difference to me and I am not sure if I would have kept going with this project without their support and advice.
I also struggled with self doubt. When I was mending my jeans, I had a panic moment where I was thinking, “What am I doing? This will look weird, people will laugh at me if I wear them”. But I kept going and finished them. It took me a couple of days to do the stitching part. Once I finished it, I was happy with how it looked, When I showed the finished project to some family members, they thought it looked good. I posted a few pictures of the finished jeans on Instagram. A lot of people told me that they thought they looked great. I got very positive responses and it boosted my confidence. Overall, the project went a lot better than I thought and my self doubts didn’t turn out to be true.
A good friend of mine told me that embellished denim was all the rage. I had no idea about that when I did this, I just thought sashiko mending looked cool. I went to the mall later that week and sure enough I saw rack after rack of jeans with embroidery or creative patches on them. It trips me out I was doing something right in style when I had no idea before I started this project. So, despite my self doubts, I was able to finish the project and got a lot of positive feedback. I also have a very cool pair of jeans that were once wearing out. From this project, I learned that it can be good for me to learn new skills. I also learned that it pays off to push through the self doubt.