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Clothes rarely wear out. They fail at a point.
A button comes off. A seam splits. A hem drops. Those three account for most of the clothes people throw away, and each one takes about ten minutes to put right by hand.
A packet of needles in mixed sizes. Thread in black, white and grey. Small sharp scissors that never cut anything but fabric. A few pins. A seam ripper, which is a tiny hook for undoing stitches.
That is the whole kit, and it fits in a mug.
Fabric scissors cut paper once and then they are ordinary scissors.
Paper is full of mineral filler and it blunts a fine edge quickly. After that the blades chew fabric instead of slicing it, which frays every edge you cut.
This is why sewing scissors get hidden. It is not possessiveness.
Cut the thread at a sharp angle rather than straight across. A slanted end has a point on it.
Hold the needle against something pale so you can see the hole. Wet the thread end, flatten it between finger and thumb, and push.
If it will not go, the needle is too fine for that thread, not the other way round.
How much thread should you pull off before you start?
A running stitch goes in, out, in, out. It is quick and it is weak.
A backstitch goes forward two, then back one, into the hole you just left. Every stitch overlaps the last, so there is no gap for the fabric to pull open.
If a seam has to hold, backstitch it.
Why do people sew a button on tight and have it pop off again?
Put a four-hole button back on a shirt.
Put these in order
Turn the garment inside out. The split is now facing you.
The old stitching left a line of holes. Follow it. Start a centimetre before the gap and finish a centimetre past it, because the ends are where it tore in the first place.
Backstitch, and go back and forth twice at each end.
The instinct is to haul each stitch as hard as you can.
That gathers the fabric into a pucker, and it makes the thread the strongest thing in the seam. Next time it pulls, the cloth tears instead.
Snug, not tight. The stitching should lie flat and disappear.
Put the garment on and pin the new length while wearing it. Measuring on a table gives you a hem that is level on the table.
Iron the fold before you sew a single stitch. Ironing is half of every sewing job, and it is the half people skip.
For a hem you catch only a thread or two of the outer fabric each time.
The needle takes a big bite of the folded edge underneath, then the tiniest possible nip of the front.
From the outside you see a faint dot every centimetre, or nothing at all.
People match colour and ignore weight, which is the one that shows.
Heavy thread on fine cotton puckers it. Fine thread on denim snaps.
And if you cannot match the colour exactly, go slightly darker. A shade too dark reads as a shadow. A shade too light reads as a mistake.
Which repair does each one want?
Tap an item, then a bucket
A patch usually goes on the inside, not the outside.
Cut it bigger than the hole in every direction, with rounded corners. Round corners do not lift. Square ones peel from the point.
Stitch it down all the way round, then stitch across the hole itself so the worn area is supported.
Hiding a mend is a choice, not a rule.
There is a long Japanese tradition of stitching repairs in contrasting thread, rows of running stitch that strengthen the whole area and are meant to be seen.
It is easier than invisible mending, it lasts better, and it turns a stain of shame into a feature.
Almost every machine problem is a threading problem.
Loops underneath, skipped stitches, thread nests, snapping. The cure for nearly all of them is the same: lift the foot, take everything out, and thread it again from the start.
The upper thread only seats properly when the foot is up.
Find a garment with a missing button, one you had already given up on.
Do that one thing, badly, tonight. The stitch does not have to be neat to hold, and it will hold.
The skill here is not the sewing. It is stopping the small failure from being the end of a piece of clothing.