My 2025 Making + Mending Goals

And my new low-stakes method that’s helping me stay on track

Why yes, I’m writing a New Years newsletter at the end of February; goals take time to mull over, and not all decisions can be made overnight (crazy, I know). I like to think of this beginning part of the year as time to test out my goals: maybe dropping some, or adding others. With that, I'm looking for ways to keep myself accountable, so I'm writing my goals here on the internet in hopes of feeling some social pressure. This newsletter will come to you in two parts - this one will be about my creative goals, and next week will be about my consumption goals. Since we are already 2 months into the year, I’ll also include a little bit about how it's going so far.

2024 Reflection

I will say, in 2024 I did kind of knock it out of the park in terms of meeting my mending related goals for the year. (Don’t ask me how my sporty goals went or if I know any Spanish, we can’t win em all ya know.) I had a goal of hosting 12 mending circles, and doing at least 12 of my own mending and upcycling projects, and while I didn’t keep close records last year I know I did more than 12 on both of those fronts (yay!). In evaluating the year ahead of me, I decided to not set specific goals about a number of mending circles or projects to do, because I know some of both will naturally happen now that I’m in the flow of mending a lot and know some folks who need mending help at community events.

What does this mean for 2025?

My biggest creative goal for the year was born out of the desire I have to have less shit in my house. The combination of my desire to save things from the landfill and my urge to start new projects before finishing old ones has led to many overflowing bins of things that have some good bones but are in need of some serious repair or re-imagining. And while I love to repair and re-imagine, I need less shit in my house. I also think it could be good for my brain to have less in-progress at any given time.

So, I went through my bins, I wrote down on (virtual) sticky notes everything that's in progress or not started yet, and I’ve loosely “assigned” certain projects to certain months of the year, from January to July. This might sound crazy, but it’s kind of working so far. I have a “done” section of the whiteboard for each month and the dopamine I get when dragging something to it really does something for my brain (maybe adults need gold stickers and positive affirmation too, after all). I’m also giving myself permission to move stuff around, not finish something, or start on something that’s allotted for a later month if inspiration strikes. I don’t want to get too project management with it and take the joy out of it. But writing it all down and seeing it laid out this way has helped with two things.

1. The overwhelmingness of not knowing what to work on

2. When I’m at a thrift store or someone offers me materials, I can now more confidently say, “nope - I’ve got enough stuff to work with right now.”

Here is an example of February so far. As you can see I ended up putting off some projects that will get moved to March, but finished some projects I had originally put in later months.

This taking inventory of everything I have materials for led me to create a second goal of the year just a couple of weeks ago. Which is to create a little collection of mended & upcycled pieces to sell at the end of 2025. This idea started with the realization that I have some great pieces I’ve picked up from the fabscrap mendables section over the years, that I was drawn to because of an upcycling idea, but that either do not fit me or aren’t my style. And while I don’t want to create a “brand” by any means, ever since I decided I would work towards selling some of these pieces, it has unlocked something in my brain creatively. I’ve been exploring some cool ideas for mending things that are less my style but feel like the right choice for the piece. I’ve also been paying more attention to detail in terms of wanting to improve the quality of my sewing.

In progress: a wierd shapped hole that i extended across the back, and some scraps I'm patching to fill it in

In progress: I didn’t have a patch fabric I liked for this random hole so I made it into an open back and pieced the part I cut off into binding for the edge. But it does need some darts to fix this fit issue

If you’re wondering why these random cut holes were there in the first place, they are mendables from fabscrap, which means they were samples being sent for recycling from fashion brands. The reason the cut holes are in them is because companies don’t typically have to pay the same duties on “damaged” goods coming into the country, and the designers can still use the purposely damaged samples to approve the fit, fabric, etc. sigh.

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Now, no part of running an Ecommerce site appeals to me right now, so I decided I’ll save up some projects throughout the year and apply to a local makers market around Christmas time. This way I can also connect with people in person and showcase the possibilities of what can be done with creative clothing repair. In the past, I've been nervous about tying my sewing to making money, but I’ve decided this could be a great way to both

a) Make some cash to use for investing back into my own creative practice through taking classes, etc., and

b) Raise some money to donate to people doing good work for labor rights in the fashion industry (probably the Garment Workers Center in LA).

Now this is a half-baked thought, and I’m not even sure if I agree with myself yet, but I also wonder if more commerce that is specifically not tied to a company and not tied to other employees livelihoods could be a needed puzzle piece in the grand scheme of the type of fashion industry we¹ want to build. I just think about how hard it is to make and sell goods at both a price point that can sustain everyone involved in the process, and be accessible for people to purchase.

Now don’t hear me say this to mean I don’t think people should be paid for their labor, or that people shouldn’t be able to make clothes as a way to fully support themselves and others. I wholeheartedly think those should be possible and think we should strive towards a society that makes that easier. But with so many sustainable brands closing shop, I wonder if there’s some alternate path for some of us to explore by making things to sell, but getting our income from somewhere else. And as I type this it sounds silly because artists have always been finding other ways to support themselves, so maybe I’m just circling around an age-old predicament here. Do chime in below so that your opinions can influence how I’m thinking about this.

Oooof - that was a whole lot about me - tell me about you! Did you set any crafty goals for the year? How are they going so far? Do these reflections make you want to start a new goal for March?

1. “We” here means those of us interested in having an industry that doesn’t exploit people or the planet, that moves towards circular systems, and that enables workers to thrive. I’m just assuming you who are reading this are one of those people :)