Mending Sweaters & Stretched Knits (Basic needle skills required )

Have you been patching your socks, sweaters, and stretch t-shirts? Are you ready to advance your mending skills with a duplicate stitch technique also known as Swiss Darning. This method of repair avoids puckers, allows for stretching, avoids pressure points, and restores strength to all of your knitted items! You can also use this beautiful technique to decorate any knitted item with or without holes. To join this class you will need competency in hand sewing skills. Someone who has mended at least 5 clothing items where the repair held up to washes and wear would be ready for this class. Sewing materials and practice items will be provided for you. Feel free to bring a knitted item to practice this on. For starting this technique it is recommended (but not required) that the item is not sentimental, has no ribbing or cables, and has medium weight yarn or larger. Feel free to join us after the class for a mending circle open to the public and people with all levels of mending skills!

NiNa is a Jill-of-many-skills who follows her soul calling to preserve the flame of ancestral knowledge and provide anyone and everyone access to this fire to light their own torches for themselves and for the next generation. She sees empirical knowledge and folk methods as reliable and feels that diplomas and paywalls aren’t necessary to call herself a cook, a forager, an herbalist, a weaver, a chemist, and a teacher. Since 2021 NiNa has been seeking knowledge about the modern and ancestral practices of textile making. For years she has been going into rabbit holes seeking to glean awareness of the many possibilities, skills, and requirements it takes to make fabric and paper. She is continually visiting and touring the rabbit holes of spinning yarn, spindle making, cord making, growing flax, dying cloth, weaving, fabric processing, felting, sewing, mending, and fiber harvesting. Though she is a capable artist she is primarily an educator of all ages. She loves a pun and she has coined herself as a con-textile-artist. Her practice as a con-textile-artist is dedicated to providing her students with context about the ancestral skills and human collaboration it takes to make their clothing so they can carry gratitude and awareness in their hearts and minds. 

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Host or Publisher In Bloom: A BIPOC Healing Circle with Amanda Benjamin