Mending Collective was founded in 2017 by Leeza Doreian, Liz Harvey, and Amanda Eicher. Leeza Doreian and Liz Harvey are the current members. Former members include Amanda Eicher and Danielle Wright.

Action 1
Mending Circle: Make Do and Mend
Mending Collective’s first public workshop was part of 100 Days Action's Community Care-in* at Southern Exposure, March 5th, 2017. 

This Mending Circle was based on Make Do and Mend— a booklet published by the British ‘Board of Trade Make Do and Mend Advisory Panel’ in 1943 as part of the war effort. In response, we ask what patriotism might be in our present time. The workshop moved through a variety of techniques, inviting participants to bring items in need of mending.

*Formed immediately after the 2016 Presidential election, 100 Days Action launched a calendar of activist and poetic action as a counternarrative to Trump's one hundred day plan.

Action 2
Mending for Others Project #1

For our second action, Mending Collective offered to mend an item for each of the organizers of 100 Days Action. Our mends were intended as a form of thanks for providing a platform for dialogue and resistance.

Seven people from the group trusted us with a garment, which we received in a brown paper bag. In the spirit of anonymity, we divvied the items up, mended them as we saw fit, and returned them in the same paper bag, without any accompanying information. 

Action 3
Visible Mending: The Sensuality of Frugality and Conservation

Visible Mending: The Sensuality of Frugality and Conservation was held on at the San Francisco School of Needlework & Design.* This workshop focused on forms of hand mending which incorporate embroidery stitches —"embroidermending." We played with mending possibilities, and enjoyed each other's stories about ancestors’ sewing practices and the histories of the (often beloved) items to be mended.

*San Francisco School of Needlework & Design is a non-profit whose goal is to inspire the next generation of hand-embroidery artisans.

Action 4
Workaday Mends
September 22, 2018
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles

This fun, family-friendly workshop presented ways to rehab your beloved rough and tumble wear. Another focus was basic forms of hand mending techniques for denim —a staple in most folks’ wardrobes.

Action 5
Common Threads
Nov. 3 - Dec. 14, 2018
Chandra Cerrito Gallery, Oakland, CA

Mending Collective was Curator-in-Residence for the gallery's Peripheral Visions program. Our exhibition, Common Threads, featured three artists whose work incorporates a critical approach to sewing in the context of the global garment industry: Carole Frances Lung/Frau Fiber, Mansur Nurullah, and Angie Wilson. We also hosted three mending related events in the gallery.

Action 6
Don’t Throw It Out!
June 6, July 11, September 5, and November 7, 2019
Oakland Main Library

Our library program, Don't Throw It Out!, focused on what we affectionately call work-a-day mends. These are mends on an everyday item, something that you wear regularly – or could. It's more likely jeans or a tee-shirt than a tux or a taffeta ball gown (unless you usually wear one of these items!). As someone who has visited the library regularly since I was young and who has a fondness for the Oakland Main Library, these workshops are particularly close to my heart.

Action 6
Thread, Stitch, Repeat 
Saturday February 22, 2020
Berkeley Public Library - South Branch

For this library workshop, we asked people to bring their well-used and well-loved clothing and learn how to make basic visible clothing mends. We kept it simple for this large and dynamic workshop. As always, we offered creative mending as a subversively fun way to push back against the garment industry and deepen our connection with our wardrobe. 

Action 8
Virtual Mending Circle
Weekly from April 2 - September 18 2020
Monthly from October 2020 - June 2022

In response to Covid-19 and the call to shelter in place, Mending Collective started a weekly mending circle on Zoom, offering virtual mending as a space for tactile and social connection. After five months, we switched to monthly mending circles. People of any skill level and with any manner of mend were welcome. While we didn’t offer formal instruction, we did our best to provide solutions. There were usually a number of experienced menders present, so crowd-sourced solutions were also available. It was all about showing up and figuring it out together.

When we started this mending circle, we faced the paradox that people seemed desperate for connection and, at the same time, increasingly overwhelmed by the uptick in online communication. What surprised us was that as we mended our clothes and talked, because we were looking down and engaged in tactile activity, the mending circles felt very intimate and specific, not at all like our other online communications.

Action 8
Pleasure and Mending!
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Textile Arts LA (Virtual Offering)

The sensuality of frugality is a foundational theme of Mending Collective. This virtual workshop was offered with deep gratitude to Audre Lorde and her notion of the power of the erotic. We at Mending Collective mend with a strong desire to touch, feel, digest, push back and participate in incremental change.

In the spirit of play during dire times, and with a nod to the absurd, we wrote a manifesto, which we read for the first time during this workshop. Read it here: Mending Collective’s manifesto.

“We hold that pleasurable, tactile experience is powerful. We invest in love while we push back on an exploitative economy based on the ever-increasing production of crap.”

Action 10
Repair with Mending Collective
Saturday, April 10th, 2022
Palo Alto Art Center

In this mending workshop, which was part of the “Creative Attention” exhibition's Community Day celebration, we explored hand stitching as a mindful and soothing form of repair for clothing, textiles, and ourselves. All were invited to join in community and relax into the tactile rhythm of hand sewing with others while deepening our relationships with our clothing. Participants practiced common stitches, as well as simple and complex patching techniques. Everyone who participated received a mending sampler kit to take home.

Action 11
“Wear Out: A Mending Workshop”
Saturday, December 3rd, 2022
Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA

This mending circle invited folks to bring clothing that was tattered, torn, missing a button, or just on the verge of being structurally unsound. It was a chance to gather on a rainy Saturday to learn and share visible mending techniques, and stitch in good company. And to do so in the beautiful space and light of Round Weather surrounded by the exhibition ‘Leeza Doreian and Liz Harvey: Material Conditional.’

Round Weather is a nonprofit art gallery with a combined commitment to visual art and alleviating the climate crisis.