I learned clothing care one small mistake at a time.

Mara Ellis · Writer and editor behind Tend & Thread

Hi, I’m Mara. For a long time, I treated clothing care as something I was simply supposed to know.

I washed most things together.
I ignored labels I did not understand.
I put off small repairs because sewing felt far more complicated than it really was.

Mara Ellis, writer and editor behind Tend and Thread, at her sewing table — Mara EllisWriter & editor

Care well.Mend simply.Wear longer.

The turning point

A jumper I couldn’t rescue. A shirt that took ten minutes.

One of the turning points came when I shrank a favourite wool jumper that I had saved for months to buy. Not long afterwards, I stopped wearing a shirt I loved because it had lost a button.

The jumper could not be rescued. But the shirt took less than ten minutes to repair once somebody showed me what to do.

That difference stayed with me.

The wool jumperShrunk. Gone.Saved for months. Washed wrong once. A label I never read.

The shirtOne button. Ten minutes.Months unworn over something a needle and thread could fix.

The gap between losing something and keeping it was smaller than I thought.

What I started writing down

wool: cold, flat, never the dryerwash
red wine: blot, don’t rubstain
knits folded, shirts hungstore
backstitch for seamsmend
30 wears before I buykeep

Whenever I discovered a clearer way to do something, I added it.

Paying closer attention

I began noticing the small decisions that affect how clothes age.

Fabrics
Labels
Wash settings
Stain responses
Storage methods
The stitches I used most

I kept notes on all of it. Nothing clever. Just the things that worked, and the things I wished I had known before the jumper.

The same questions

Friends and family started asking me what I had once asked.

I realised the problem was not a lack of information. It was that clothing care was often explained as if everybody already understood the basics. Each guide answers one of the questions I kept hearing.