Can I brag for a second?

2025 mending and making wrapped

I’m on a plane as I write this, and I’m not quite sure why, but flights always make me reflective about the past and contemplative about the future. I think it’s the being stuck in a liminal space, divorced from the world for a certain amount of time. This time I opened my substack post from earlier this year about my 2025 making and mending goals, so I wanted to attempt to put words to some thoughts I have about it here and think about what I was successful at and what I want to try moving forward.

One thing that is striking to me from sitting where I am now (and is perhaps obvious) is how some of the most pivotal factors to my making and mending in 2025 (and also to life in general tbh) weren’t in my mind as considerations when I first made those goals. Life tends to be unpredictable and all that.

I had two big goals I outlined in 2025 for my making and mending practice

1. To physically finish a lot of the stuff that was already in progress (and therefore have less shit in my house).

2. To make a small collection of things to sell at the end of the year, hopefully at an in-person market.

In a way, I didn’t accomplish either of these goals… in another way you could say I exceeded them? Let me explain. The goal of finishing a bunch of in progress projects was born out of being tired of the overflowing bins of stuff in my house (people in nyc apartments I’m sure feel my pain). At the start of the year I made myself a virtual whiteboard and assigned different projects to the bins for different months, but I didn’t actually keep up with that method of tracking things at all, and I haven’t even looked at that virtual whiteboard in months (adhd girlies rise up). So I went back to take a look, and I was surprised that I’d actually completed most of the projects. It was also fun to, after the fact, make sticky notes for all the projects that I ended up completing that weren’t in my brain in February when I compiled my list.

A snapshot of the month with the most completed projects. The D is for myself, the heart indicates free work for a loved one, the star is to track commisions/ and or things I may sell. I do like looking back at this so maybe I’ll try this same method again in 2026 but stick to it

In total I completed 35 mending and upcycling projects this year. 12 of those were things for myself, 9 were for friends and family, and 14 were to hopefully sell in the future. I was surprised by how high that number was, and I think it’s important to celebrate our wins, hence the title of this letter. I will note, there are 6 projects that I never got around to that I put on the list originally, which is a sign that maybe I should take a trip to a tailor to have someone else do some alterations for me or find a new home for some of those materials or pieces (spring materials swap anyone?).

On a very exciting note, I found a different solution for my apartment mess that I wouldn’t have been able to foresee at the beginning of the year. I have a studio space now!!!!!!! Well, I’m subletting 1/3 of a studio space to be more exact. This has always been a dream of mine, and a combination of a promotion at my 9–5 job and a crazy good deal on rent for my apartment made it possible earlier than I thought it would be. I was on a trip with my family when I saw a Facebook advertisement from a painter that was looking for a third person to share an existing studio sublet, and I’m so glad I quickly took the leap. Even though this year has been busier than anticipated, having a space that can stay messy and doesn’t require taking over a shared living room to work on projects has made it sooo much easier to fit sewing time in, and it has opened me up creatively in ways I haven’t felt since I was in college working on apparel design and fiber art projects.

My friend Leo recently started a photo series of creatives in their spaces, and he captured some fun pictures of me working that I’ll share here so you can get a glimpse.

photos by @lpo.photo on Instagram

I’ve been slowly organizing and optimizing my little corner of Brooklyn, so let me know if you are interested in more of a look at the studio space!

The other goal of mine was to take some of my long-term, unfinished pieces, finish them, and sell them at a Christmas market. That did not happen. The end of the year snuck up on me, I wasn’t really ready, and the only market I applied to I didn’t get a spot in. I wanted to sell at a market because as I said earlier this year in my goals piece, “no part of running an ecommerce business appeals to me right now.” However, my thoughts about that changed when I stumbled upon Naia on instagram. Naia is a new two-sided marketplace for menders and up-cyclers to showcase their services and products, and consumers to commission things already in their closet to be re-designed. I had a chat with their founder and loved her vision of connecting consumers to redesign services, and I knew this would be the way I wanted to sell products. The lift of using an existing marketplace is much lighter than making an e-commerce store from scratch, and I wanted to contribute to this new platform and help bring eyeballs to a concept that feels custom-built for the work I want to put out into the world.

With all that to say, I’m thrilled to announce that I have posted my first collection on Naia, a drop of Fall/Winter pieces that started as damaged goods that have been creatively re-imagined. I’ll post a couple of my favorites here, but I’d love if you went to the collection and explored the whole thing. Most of the pieces started as “mendables” from Fabscrap, and each piece has a description of the origin story of the piece and what repair or re-work has been done to it. It’s nerve-wracking to put my work out in the world with just a hope that they find good homes and that people want to pay for the labor of craft, but doing scary things is good.

Here’s to a new year celebrating old clothes!

My plane is landing soon, so I think I’ll have to save talking about goals for 2026 for another post, but I’d love to hear about your year. What was your favorite thing you worked on? What are you wanting to make in 2026? I’m all ears in the comments!