Mending is the skill that makes secondhand clothing work. Almost every garment you find has something wrong with it, and the difference between a garment that lives on your back and one that lives in a bag is usually twenty minutes of sewing.
What follows is the short list. Learn these five repairs and you can handle most of what a thrift store throws at you.
A basic kit
You do not need a machine to start. A handful of needles in different sizes, a spool of thread in black, one in white, and a couple of colours matched to the garments you own. Sharp small scissors, a seam ripper, a thimble if you find hand sewing through heavy cloth uncomfortable, and a couple of darning needles, which are longer and have a bigger eye.
On thread: synthetic thread is stronger and more abrasion-resistant, while cotton thread is more period-appropriate and less likely to cut through very old, fragile cloth. On delicate vintage garments, match the thread to the original as closely as you can, and use a fine needle.
Practise on something worthless. Buy a garment for a nominal amount specifically to practise on, and make your mistakes there.
1. Sewing on a button — properly
Most buttons come off because the thread wore through, not because the button failed. Reattach it the way it was attached.
Work from the back of the fabric, through the button, and back down. For a flat button on a shirt, keep the stitches moderately loose so the button can sit on top of the fabric without pinching it. For a thicker button or a coat button, build a shank: pass the thread through a matchstick or a thick needle laid across the button, then remove it and wrap the resulting loop of thread tightly to form a stem. The shank lets the button sit above the buttonhole on thick fabric, which is why vintage coats often have buttons standing well proud of the cloth.
Re-sew the other buttons on the same garment while you have the needle out. They are all the same age and will fail in the same way.
2. Closing a split seam
A seam that has come apart at a stress point — under the arm, at the crotch, along a pocket opening — is the simplest repair and the one with the biggest payoff.
Turn the garment inside out, line up the two edges, and work a backstitch along the original stitch line. Backstitch is strong, resists pulling, and closely mimics machine stitching: bring the needle up through the fabric, take a small step back, go down, and repeat. Keep the stitches the same length as the original ones. For a seam with no allowance left, or in a knit that will not fray, an overcast stitch will do.
If the seam failed because the fabric around it has gone thin, reinforce the area with a small strip of lightweight iron-on interfacing or a patch on the inside before you close it, otherwise it will split again beside your repair.
3. Repairing a hem
Hems drop because the thread wears through where it rubs on shoes and floors. The fix is a catch stitch, sometimes called a herringbone stitch: tiny working stitches hidden in the fold, with the visible thread travelling diagonally so it flexes rather than snapping.
Match the thread colour to the garment and keep the tension loose. A hem stitched too tightly puckers the fabric and shows a line on the outside. For a machine-sewn hem where the stitching has come away but the fold is intact, you can also simply re-stitch along the original line, though on a fine garment a hand catch stitch will be less visible.
4. Darning a hole in knitwear
Moth holes in wool and cashmere are worth repairing, and the repair is nearly invisible when it is done well.
Use a darning needle and yarn that matches the weight and colour of the knit, ideally untwisted from an inside seam allowance or taken from a spare ball. Work the darn as a woven patch: run a series of parallel threads across the hole in the direction of the knit, then weave across them at right angles, over one and under the next, following the original stitches as closely as you can. Take the repair into solid fabric on all sides, at least a centimetre past the hole.
On finer knits, use a fine needle and single-ply yarn, and stretch the area slightly as you work so the repair does not pucker when worn. A darn is a scar, not a copy, but a good one disappears from a metre away.
5. Replacing a zip, or rescuing one
Zips fail in three ways: the slider wears, the pull snaps, or the teeth separate. A zip that separates behind the slider is often salvageable by squeezing the slider gently with pliers so it closes the teeth again. A snapped pull can be replaced with a new pull or a split ring. A zip with missing teeth on a lined garment is a job for a tailor, or for an afternoon with a seam ripper if the garment is worth it to you.
Knowing what not to mend
Some damage is not repairable, and spending time on it produces a garment that fails anyway. Dry rot, where silk or very old cotton tears like paper along a fold, cannot be mended. Extensive moth damage across a whole panel means the fabric has lost its structure. Leather and suede cracks cannot be restored. In these cases the honest options are to use the garment for fabric, to repair it visibly as part of its character, or to let it go.
When to pay someone else
Pay for structured garments: jackets with pad stitching and lining are built inside out, and a home repair will show. Pay for anything valuable, where an invisible repair preserves a real amount of money. Pay for leather and shoes, which need different techniques and different tools. Everything else — seams, hems, buttons, knits, waistbands — is worth learning, because it is the only way the secondhand habit makes economic and environmental sense.