Fibre Arts New Zealand
Mending by Design
Anna Hicks - Wellington
'Mending by Design’ reimagines repair as a creative opportunity rather than something to hide. This approach celebrates mending as a tool to add style and personality to your clothes. Each repair becomes a meaningful part of the garment's history whilst extending the life of that garment and reducing its carbon footprint. Repairing your clothes is more than just fixing fabrics — it's an act of resistance against the culture of waste, overconsumption, and overproduction.
Say no to the cycle of consumerism and fall in love with visible mending!
In this workshop, you’ll learn practical techniques combined with thoughtful design.
The first 2.5 days will cover a wide variety of hand-stitched visible mending techniques, both traditional and modern. You can create a visible mending sampler or work your way through the mending pile.
The last 2 days will be creating a mending-inspired artwork by upcycling clothes. With guidance, you’ll design and start working on your own projects using your new visible mending skills.
Day 1 – Visible Mending Techniques
- Patching techniques for top and underneath patches
- Variety of embroidery stitches and how to use them with different fabrics, thread types and stabilisers.
- Scotch/honeycomb darning.
Day 2 – Visible Mending Techniques
- Traditional darning with a mushroom, hoop or darning loom.
- Different darning shapes and weave patterns.
- Creating feature holes with a “cheats” needle lace.
Day 3 (half day) – Visible Mending techniques
- Swiss darning/duplicate stitch techniques.
- Embroidery stitches for lettering.
Day 4 & 5 – Create a mending-inspired artwork with upcycled clothes.
With guidance, you’ll design and start working on your own project using your new visible mending skills. This could be modifying old clothes to give them a new lease on life or creating a piece of art to hang on the wall.
Design ideas and practical techniques will be explored as well as how to finish art pieces using bindings or facings, hanging sleeves or mounting on canvas blocks.
The last 2 days will have the optional use of a sewing machine. A machine will be available to use but you might want to bring your own.
About Anna
Anna Hicks is a sustainable textile artist from Wellington, New Zealand. She has a fashion degree from Massey University and is a passionate advocate for sustainability and the health benefits of creativity. She works mainly with waste materials to create a variety of textile art and sustainable fashion. She enjoys nothing more than the challenge of working with what you’ve got.
Anna’s award-winning upcycled fashion and textile art has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in the World of Wearable Arts, NZ Eco-Fashion Week, NZ Quilt Symposium, Changing Threads exhibition, the World Quilt Show and many more.
Anna is also an event producer who has designed and curated many quilt exhibitions and fashion shows.
Anna Hicks - Textile Artist | Facebook
Anna Hicks (@runningwithstitches) • Instagram photos and videos
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