Welcome to the Makerie Online: Mend with Memoir, a unique three-day virtual creative retreat exploring the nourishing ways we mend our beloved belongings and pay homage to the garments and objects we already own. Join sensational artists and educators from different parts of the world ~ Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald, Heidi Parkes, and Hikaru Noguchi for this special creative gathering celebrating the art of mending. In its raw definition, a memoir is a narrative, written from the perspective of the author, about an important part of their life. We love thinking about the stories our clothes and textiles tell us, and how this narrative can span a lifetime and beyond. What we choose to repair and why; the reason we can’t part with something; or even a new story we want to weave from a particular season of our life. During this experience, we will be looking at and honoring these special stories that have already been told, are currently being created, or have yet to be born.

Each of our three days together will feature different aspects of mending, as we explore mending through lenses of time, technique, and color. Day One will explore mending with time; how we find the time to mend, time-saving technical skills, and opening our minds to when and where we can fit mending into our busy lives. Day Two will highlight the structure and texture of mends, filling holes using special techniques to weave decorative stories into our belongings. Day Three will be a deep dive into the worlds of color, revealing color-matching secrets for invisible mending and discovering palettes that make our hearts sing. In addition to mending, we will share an element of self-care by the way of neck and shoulders yoga, led by certified yoga instructor Heidi Parkes. For the last half hour on Day Three, we’ll be hosting a living conversation around the Stories of our Belongings, inviting participants to share the meaning behind the things they cherish and choose to mend or intend to mend. Both our teacher team and student community will share in a dialogue to deepen our exploration into the art of mending.

A Care Kit will be mailed to you with special materials for this workshop experience, and a comprehensive list of materials you’ll be asked to bring will be provided. This experience will be recorded and you will have unlimited access to the recordings for one month following the event. Five reduced-fee tickets will be offered, based on financial need using the honor system. These tickets, two for international and three for U.S. participants, are anonymous and first come first serve via our registration system. We can’t wait to gather together, from the comforts of our homes, to mend, tend, and honor the creativity found in each of us.

DAY 1

mending TIME with HEIDI PARKES

 The first time that Heidi and Erin connected on Zoom, it was for a conversation about pricing mending commissions. Their top concern was time! How to estimate the time a mend would take to give an accurate financial estimate and match a client’s budget. This day will cover ways to maximize your time, and ways to lovingly linger on a mend for a loved one. (For example, Heidi recently spent 16 hours on a jeans mend for her sweetheart Beau.). Finding time to mend. Understanding the nuance of cost-per-wear. Savvy time-saving technical skills. Busting through limiting beliefs about when and where mending can happen. TIME is one of Heidi’s favorite mending topics, and it’ll be one of yours soon too.

DAY 2

MENDING STRUCTURE AND TEXTURE with HIKARU NOGUCHI

Hikaru has been a leading darning and mending creator for the last 10 years, currently teaching an average of 150 students every month. From these teaching experiences, Hikaru has seen all kinds of damaged yarn and fabric, with over 70% of these garments made from knitted and/or stretchy fabric, and mixed fiber materials. Traditional methods of darning and mending are not enough to repair these complicated, modern garments.  With this in mind, Hikaru discovered that the Blanket Stitch technique used in the honeycomb or spider look created stretchy structures that work well to mend many types of damage. She decided to call the technique “Honeycomb Mending.” Unlike traditional basket weave darning, the Honeycomb method is very easy and accessible even to those who are inexperienced in needlework, becoming a popular method for repair, even amongst teenagers. Hikaru believes that many problems can be solved if anyone has the ability to mend even lightly damaged garments, and these simple and practical approaches can bring creativity out of those who are willing to try.

During the session, Hikaru will demonstrate how to fill a hole using the Honeycomb stitch in the round tornado, parallel right and left, and Honeycomb flower styles. We hope these techniques will not only be eye-openers to your mending journeys but ignite new ways to weave decorative stories into your belongings.

DAY 3

mending through COLOR with erin Lewis-FitzgerALD

Erin is obsessed with color and best known for her creative, colorful mends that make clothes and other textiles look better than new. After years of watching her mending students panic with color indecision, she decided to bottle her secret sauce and teach color for the first time in this workshop. In her session, she'll share how she curates visible-mending color palettes for personal mends and for clients, color-matching secrets for invisible mending, how to find the colors and color combinations that make your heart sing, and how to use color to highlight a garment’s history.