This week I fell in love with this simple video by Tom of Holland, in which he explains the essence of his “visible mending” in fiber art. He is not strictly, or even most, a crochet artist but he does incorporate crochet into his work and I think that the overall message of what he’s doing is so interesting and valuable. He writes, in part,
“I like to do things that take forever, as it allows me to gain a deep understanding of material qualities and the traditional techniques I use for making and mending contemporary objects. I’m interested in both sustainability and the rich textile history around wool in the United Kingdom, and as a result I’d like to explore the boundaries of when the life of a woollen garment (and by extension any object) starts and ends.”
Visible Mending
As you learn from the video, this artist is all about celebrating quality fashion and fiber by choosing garments that are meant to last season after season, year after year. Of course, no fiber lasts forever, and so we can learn to mend it (something that of course the generations before us did regularly out of necessity!) Tom of Holland chooses “visible mending”; rather than hiding the details of how he has repaired the work, he draws attention to it. He creates art from the mending itself, paying homage to the value of the original piece by showing that you can still use it. I love this idea. And of course the mending then becomes its own new work of art, which adds value to the crafts of sewing, embroidery, knitting and crochet.
Visible Mending with Crochet
One great example of how Tom of Holland has done this using crochet is found in this sweater:
This was a beautiful sweater that was moth eaten so he was asked by a friend to give it a repair. He shares,
“I darned each hole with some judicious weaving. Then I got my crochet hook out and crocheted a ruffle made up from double, triple and quadruple sts. I bunched up the ruffle over each darned hole.”
On Crochet
Tom started using crochet in his work in 2012. He had learned to crochet as a child and made some doilies for his grandmother but hadn’t used it since other than incorporating a crochet cast-on in his knitting. Then he saw a crochet bag he liked and decided to take a crochet class and make his own using recycled wool. He noted that he likes the way crochet is easy to frog and that it’s quick to do. In a 2013 post he noted that he had gained appreciation of crochet as a repair technique, specifically implementing the single crochet stitch.
Pom Pom Quarterly Has a Podcast Interview with Tom