I mend clothes by hand and on an old treadle machine in north-east London, and I write each repair up afterwards so that the next one goes a little better.

Treadle Lane Mending is one person, a cast-iron treadle sewing machine and a drawer full of wool ends in a flat in Walthamstow. I started mending properly in the winter of 2021, when I had more time than spare money and a pile of clothes I did not want to replace, and I have been writing up the repairs ever since so that I remember what worked. The name comes from nothing grander than the machine and the short lane I live on.

Most of what is here is visible mending: darns that show, patches in a cloth that does not match, rows of running stitch across a knee. I am not trying to make repairs disappear. A mend that shows is honest about the life of the thing it sits on, and it is usually quicker and stronger than one that tries to hide. Where something I tried came apart, the entry says so, because the failures have taught me more than the tidy results.

Once a month I help at a free mending table in a community hall nearby, alongside two neighbours who sew better than I do, and several entries come out of what people bring to it. I do not name the hall, the people who come, or the shops where I find cloth and thread. I do not sell anything and I do not take commissions. The address at the foot of each page reaches me if you have a question about a repair.