When I first began repairing clothes I kept all my tools in a drawstring bag, stuffed haphazardly in my backpack. As you can imagine, with time the threads became too tangled to use. The scissor poked through the fabric. The bag became a mess and thus I simply didn't use it anymore.
Around 2016 I began brainstorming another way to organize my sewing kit materials as a traveler living out of my backpack. When sealing a letter to mail to my life-long pen pal inspiration struck. An envelope would be the perfect shape to model a sewing kit after. And the top flap of the envelope could double as a pin cushion!
Fast forward through years or trial and error , through gifting kits to friends, selling & evolving through my Etsy shop, and of course, hours and hours (&hours) of personal experience using the kits myself and finally I arrived at the design you see here.
More importantly than the envelope-inspired design are the tools that the kits contains:
Pins, needles in a variety of sizes, embroidery floss, thread, patches and a handful of buttons are my most recommended sewing tools. Even if you stopped me on my bike on my way to my totally un-sewing related day job, I would surely have my kit in my bag. Honestly, I would feel like a total crafter-failure if someone needed a mend and I didn't have the necessary tools handy.
Just as my practice has evolved from mending as a means of keeping myself clothed to more artistic styles of visible and sashiko mending, so have evolved the tools I use. Once upon a time I only used jean and other dark fabric. Now I celebrate these colorful squares of cotton quilting fabric alongside the jean that I have always loved.
In the past few months I also learned to use embroidery floss and use it almost exclusively for patching and hemming. The downside of using embroidery floss is that you usually have to separate the floss into strands of 2 or 3. The upside is are the fun colors that give a patch a super quaint look that thread alone does not.
(If you are in the market for a sewing kit with all the items mentions above, do check out my Etsy shop and the selection of kits I have to offer there).
So, now you have had a look inside my sewing kit -- and I am curious -- what tools do you find essential to sewing on the go?
Let me know in the comments.
Happy sewing & mending everyone!!