Vernée and Laura joined Carrie Jung on Boston’s local NPR station WBUR for an episode of Radio Boston to talk about mending and community repair in December 2023. You can listen online:
“Rev. Laura Everett and Vernee Wilkinson teach classes on sewing and the history of textiles in New England under the name of “Mending Church.” Radio Boston speaks to the pair to learn why they feel the act of mending teaches participants in visible and invisible ways.”
https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2023/12/11/textile-artists-workshops-mending-new-england
Laura has written about the “Spirituality of Mending” for Religion News Service.
“There is not much reason to mend a worn sock. Socks are cheap. Overnight delivery can get me a new pair by the time I wake up tomorrow. Darning a sock takes time. And yet, I’ve made the commitment to slow down, stitch more and teach others as I take up mending as a spiritual practice.”
You can read more of her essay here: https://religionnews.com/2019/04/10/the-spirituality-of-mending/
She’s got another essay up in Faith & Leadership on mending “How is repairing the church like mending a garment?”
“Mending holds out the possibility of both utility and beauty, without the idolatry of the new or the wasteful disposal of the old. Mending appeals to our desire for visible results: Can we make this work again? Can we make this beautiful?”
You can read more of her essay here: https://faithandleadership.com/how-repairing-the-church-mending-garment
Mending is trending. There’s a lot of reporting on mending. Take a look:
- Make do and mend: As landfills grow, people opt for needle and thread, in CS Monitor
- “The Feminist Power of Embroidery” by E. Tammy Kim in the New York Times
- Columns in the Guardian on the “Right to Repair,”
- Essays in Vox on the“visible mending” tradition of Japanese sashiko,
- Wall Street Journal reporting on the proliferation of “repair cafes”
- 2008 New York Times piece on the rise of mending at luxury fashion houses.
Mending Church 