MENDING.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2174, 12 February 1881, Page 3

MENDING.

[From the " Queen.”] I am going to maintain that darning, mending, and repairing are essentially ladylike employments. In a most literal sense I mean this, for where do we find servants nowadays who can mend neatly ? If they could, they would despise it, and they will continue to do so until ladies again mend as beautifully as our grandmothers did. Then perhaps the art (and it is an art) will percolate downwards, like manners (or the want of them) do to-day. First of all, mending is better done by fingers that belong to a cultivated brain, because more than any other kind of needlework it requires thought and adaptation. No two things in mending are ever alike, no two darns ever present the same aspect, no article of clothing or household linen ever wears to order; therefore this is one of the reasons why the working classes are not natty menders, as their time at school is limited, and seaming and hemming are still seaming and hemming, on whatever quality of material they practise them, and the constant practice makes perfect. But mending well is the result of experience, and although it gives more trouble to teach than any other form of needlework, ret if mothers would begin to teach their little children to mend as soon as they begin to teach to hem they would find that a little daily instruction would in a few years make them good menders of stockings, underlinen, and house linen. To very little children mending may be made amusing, I taught my children to darn on canvas with colored wools, and this plan has now become the custom in many schools. Instead of working and worrying and doing infinite harm to little tender unformed brains under seven years of age by teaching them “ book learning, ” it would do both little boys and girls lasting good to spend the same time in teaching them to sew, knit, and darn. There is quite as great a discipline in the employment, for the children must be attentive, painstaking, and industrious. Their workboxes must also be tidy, their hands scrupulously clean, and the tone and companionship of a cultivated and gentle mother or governess while the lesson is going on is an education in itself. Young children, both boys and girls, ought to have two sewing lessons a day. In the morning lot them knit, then crochet, then do plain sewing, and in the afternoon let them learn to mend. The canvas on which they should learn to darn ought to be moderate squares of plain canvas. Teach them to cut them straight by a thread, and then to hem them all round with colored silk. Overcasting the edges is not sufficient. Then with differentcolored single Berlin wool teach them to thread their own needles, and then to darn by taking up one thread and leaving the next, to make the rows even ; by teaching them to make the Ist, 3rd, stb, 7th, and all the uneven rows alike, and the 2nd, 4th, 6th, Btb, and all the even rows the same. This is done by beginning either above or below the last stitch in the first row, and stopping short of one stitch at the other end, or going one stitch beyond, just as you may have begun from the bottom, and then they should count each row before they begin another. Do not let the darns exceed eight to ten stitches, and when they get on a little teach them to cross or darn with another colored thread, and to choose a good contrast. Show them that, it they have done the _ first part of the darn properly, it is all ready for them to crors by taking up the piece of wool that lies over the missed stitch. Teach them to leave loops, and to make them exactly even, which they must learn to find out by putting the needle through all the loops when the darn is finished, and to compare notes which child can show the most even loops.

Do not read to young children while they are learning to sew—it only worries both mother and children. Half an hour or more goon passes, and many lessons are contained in the carrying out of the plan I have sketched ; and let each learn to put needles, wool, &0., away neatly, and to nut their workboxes away before a story is read or told. Let the children have in their boxes a memorandum book with their names in it, and lit them bring it to have marks entered in it, and at the end of the month a prize should be given to each painstaking child.