February 22, 2006 Issue                                               

©2005 The Chestnut Hill Local

Nan Ides reaps what she sews — a terrific book
by PAULA M. RILEY

I was nine years old when I stapled my sewing badge to the sash of my Girl Scout uniform. I don’t remember whether or not I completed all the assignments for the badge, I just remember trying hard to hide the metal staple on my green cloth sash.

As I recount this story to others, they often share the haphazard remedies for clothing repairs they’ve applied as adults, including the use of masking tape to fix a hem or adhering just the right size safety pin for a ripped button hole.

Now there is finally a solution for us non-sewers to make simple repairs to our garments! Roxborough resident Nan L. Ides’ Hand Mending for Beginners: 10 Easy Illustrated Steps to Save You Time and Money is specifically written for the non-sewer. This offers illustrated, step-by-step lessons to fix the most common problems with any type of garment.

Ms. Ides is an avid sewer who loves to design her own clothes. As a very petite woman, she always had to repair clothing she’d purchase. The sewing and hand mending skills she used to maintain her wardrobe were hardly a secret. For years she was known among her friends as the ‘expert sewer’. Ides, who’s worked at the EPA since 1991, tells how her colleagues would come to her with a lost button or dropped hem. She began by making these quick repairs, but then changed her approach. She would tell them, “I’ll charge you $10 to do this, or I can show you how to do it.” They chose the latter, and thus began her teaching of hand-mending skills.

Ides started with lunchtime instructional classes for her co-workers. “Many of my colleagues are scientists, biologists and other highly educated individuals for whom I have great respect. One in particular was a tough person – dealing with the press, regularly in front of the news cameras. She looked at the sewing needle as if it was a totally foreign product. This woman, who is so intelligent and could handle such a challenging job, looked scared to death of a sewing needle.”

Ides, who grew up in a home where “there was always a sewing box ready for us,” was aghast. She couldn’t imagine that a sewing needle could be so intimidating, but she encountered more and more professionals who just didn’t know how to do simple maintenance to their clothing. She found that these people would spend way too much money at the tailor or just leave these slightly damaged clothes in the back of the closet.

Beginning this spring, these clothes can be taken out of the closet! Ides will bring her hand-mending class to the Mount Airy Learning Tree. This class will address simple hand-mending skills for the non-sewer. Like the class she taught at the Main Line School for the last three years, this course will include much hands-on work. She will bring a variety of fabrics and buttons for students to practice their newly acquired skills. She hopes to have a great collection of participants as she’d had in the past. “My classes had a great mix of men and women, young and old. There were people with kids and others on fixed incomes and some who just wanted to save the money they’d spent for a tailor to do simple repairs.

“My idea for the book actually came from my classes. I found myself producing handouts and pamphlets demonstrating what I was teaching in class.” The book was a natural extension to her teaching efforts. When asked what actually motivated her to put forth all the time and effort needed to produce a book, she replied emphatically, “I was truly amazed that people didn’t know how to sew a button! Having a button fall off is not a reason to not wear something. I wanted to show people how easy it is to fix their clothes.”

Ides did much research and found that there were plenty of sewing books available, many were written by wonderful instructors and covered all areas of sewing. “But this isn’t really a sewing book,” Ides explains, “it’s for people who want nothing to do with sewing. It’s a book about mending clothes, a problem that all of us must address at some point.”

The book provides very clear instructions from the very basic - how to thread a needle - to putting patches on clothing. It offers great tips in each chapter and includes suggestions for ironing/pressing (they are different) and general sewing fashion tips. Its best feature is its simplicity. “I tried to do a very personal step-by-step book. In each chapter you need no more than five tools. We used pictures which were explicit and best representative of the instruction.” All photography for the book was done by Michael Price.

This book is not just about making repairs to button holes and clothing tears. It includes hand-mending skills that can help you get more out of your clothing. “You can dress fashionably wearing stuff that is a few years old. If you can’t afford to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe annually, you can make the changes to the clothes to meet the ‘in’ style. Hems of skirts go up and down, and pants can fall at all different lengths based on the fashion trend. Having the skills to easily make these changes lets you do things with the clothes you love the most and the material you don’t want to part with.

“The book is for anyone who wants to save time and money. You don’t have to throw out a garment just because you lost a button or tore a seam. You don’t need to spend $20 for each repair at a tailor either.”

Hand Mending for Beginners: 10 Easy Illustrated Steps to Save You Time and Money is being sold in the Weaver’s Way Co-op and the Big Blue Marble Bookstore on 551 Carpenter Lane in Mt. Airy. Ides will be giving a hand-mending instruction and having a book signing on Feb. 25, 3 p.m., at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore. You can purchase the book at amazon.com and iuniverse.com.