Workshop lead by Sewing Rebellion NYC at NURTUREart, May 27, 2012
Photos by Tsubasa Berg
Filed under: fabric, leather, rubber | Tags: broken, cut, mended, sewn, stitched, torn
I wore this pair of sandals the whole 7 months I was in India. Pretty soon, the soles started wearing thin. I could feel pebbles through the soles. So, when these kids approached me at a train station and offered to repair them for me, I asked them to make an insert.
The insert fell out pretty quickly since it wasn’t sewn in properly, so in Vrindavan, I had this cobbler sew in a proper insert for the heel. Perfecto.
Eventually, that wore down too, and a cobbler in Bangalore sewed an entire new sole to the bottoms of the existing ones. New treads!
No photo of the last repair, but I had another Bangalorean cobbler tighten the strap that goes between your toes. 3 years later and they’re still a major component of my summer gear!
A friend said they are probably one of the only pairs of cobbled Airwalks in the world.
Langmusi China, 2006. One handle had pulled off my tote bag, and this guy stitched it back on and reinforced the other one.
Very cool sewing machine! Looks like he’s mainly a cobbler.
Boro Cotton Kimono, Yamagata Prefecture (Northern Japan) c. 1900
“Boro textiles were made in the late 19th and early 20th century by impoverished Japanese people from reused and recycled indigo-dyed, cotton rags. What we see in these examples are typical—patched and sewn, piece-by-piece, and handed down from generation-to-generation, where the tradition continued. These textiles are generational storybooks, lovingly repaired and patched with what fabric was available. Never intended to be viewed as a thing of beauty, these textiles today take on qualities of collage, objects of history, and objects with life and soul.” — via Accidental Mysteries
This image (via Wafu Works) reminds me of Tsubasa’s Jeans, which his mother has mended over and over again.
“I split open my elbow today after I took a spill. It wasn’t that big of a cut, just deep. Since it was on the joint, I needed to close it up. I gave myself a few stitches with some fine fishing line-ish thread I had. My bandage is printed to look like toast.” — Eric Clausen
Here’s an Instructable on the subject.
Repaired Things 