Sashiko instructor Xiaoxiao Yan teaches the workshop. She also films tutorials on YouTube under the name Xiaoxiao Yarn.Karene-Isabelle Jean-Baptiste/The Globe and Mail
I’ve always been intimidated by sewing. My fine motor skills are lacking, as is my patience for tedious tasks – and I long figured I would never possess this skill.
Last month, however, in the hopes of reducing my clothing consumption and carbon footprint, I swallowed my self-doubt and attended a four-hour workshop to learn to repair my clothing using sashiko visible mending.
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Sashiko is a Japanese stitching style that involves repairing and reinforcing clothing using intentionally visible stitches and patches that enhance the aesthetic of the garment.
The workshop was taught by Xiaoxiao Yan, who was born in a small village in southeast China to tailor parents. Her grandfather once grew cotton in that same village and her grandmother weaved it into thread, but Yan’s parents changed careers when she was just 3, and she never learned the fibre arts despite its strong presence in her family.
It wasn’t until Yan was living in the Laurentians during the pandemic, without access to stores or seamstresses, that she decided to learn sashiko to mend her favourite sweater. She quickly became enamoured with it and left her career in television to begin teaching workshops and filming tutorials on YouTube under the name Xiaoxiao Yarn. She is currently studying the art of textiles at Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
The fabric on the table shows the basic running stitch and the whip stitch.Karene-Isabelle Jean-Baptiste/The Globe and Mail
“Nowadays, because clothes are mass-produced, we easily throw them away; we don’t have a connection to who made them or where the fabric came from,” Yan told me. “When we put our own handiwork into our clothes, we’re adding personal touches that help us appreciate and hold onto them longer.”
In a small room in a Montreal community centre on the first warm Saturday of the year, I sat at a large rectangular table alongside six other participants. We introduced ourselves one by one and I quickly learned I was the only true beginner in the room. Many had worked with textiles before but said they were eager to learn a new technique. A young woman sitting next to me spoke of her desire to learn sashiko to move closer to a zero-waste lifestyle.
Sashiko pin cushion.Karene-Isabelle Jean-Baptiste/The Globe and Mail
Yan gave a brief history of sashiko and explained the specific materials needed for it: cotton threads, sturdy needles and a sashiko thimble which slips over your middle finger and sits comfortably in the palm of your hand. All these materials were sitting in front of us, ready to be used.
Basic sashiko running stitches
The first stitch we learned – the basic sashiko running stitch – was simple enough, though I got off to a delayed start after struggling to thread my needle and make a knot.
Basic sashiko running stitches are lines of equal-sized small stitches that are created by moving your needle up and down, in and out of the fabric. You can add as many stitches and as many lines as you’d like, but the key to making it look nice is to make them equal and consistent.
We used the running stitch to attach a square patch to the front of a piece of fabric, first using a ruler to draw straight lines across the patch which we could then follow with our needle. My result was messier than the other members of the class, many of whom seemed to seamlessly sew while maintaining the same amount of space between every stitch. Despite my imperfect result, I felt satisfied that I had sewn something for the first time.
Whip stitch
Next, we learned the whip stitch, which is used to cover up holes in clothing. This involves putting a patch behind the hole and sewing small stitches all around the perimeter of it, creating a design reminiscent of the sun.
You can use sashiko stitches to create a wide variety of designs.Karene-Isabelle Jean-Baptiste/The Globe and Mail
We then used the basic running stitch to secure the edges of the square patch behind the fabric. I did this but failed to sew through one side of the patch, so I added an extra border on the inside of the first. I came up with the solution on my own – showing just how easily you can fix mistakes even when you’re a beginner.
Jujizashi sashiko stitch
The final stitch we learned was the Jujizashi sashiko stitch, or the 10 cross stitch, which looks like a series of small crosses but is actually an ancient Chinese character that means “10.”
For this project, we sewed the stitches directly on the fabric, though it could easily be done with a patch as well. The stitches had to be particularly uniform for this design, so we were advised to use a ruler to ensure the distances were equal throughout. We then did the basic running stitch in straight lines before going back and doing the same thing again, this time sewing perpendicular lines across the original stitches to create small crosses.
With some time remaining after the third task, other participants took on more challenging projects while I rested my neck and fingers, feeling a sense of pride for having made something with my hands. I felt empowered to go home and practise what I had learned, already envisioning a beloved cotton sweater with a hole in the armpit that I would now be able to save.