Close-up of the bottom of a person's feet wearing worn, fuzzy red socks with multiple holes and frayed fabric, revealing the skin underneath.
Person sewing colorful fabric patches onto a blue textile item with embroidery, while surrounded by yarn and sewing supplies.
A person standing on toes wearing dark gray socks with colorful fingerprint designs on the heels, in a bright room with a window in the background.
Colorful hand-knit socks with circular patches of multicolored embroidery, surrounded by small yarn balls in various colors, including purple, blue, yellow, green, orange, beige, and brown.
Embroidery or craft fabric with handmade floral and leaf designs, surrounded by scissors, colored pens, and fabric pieces.
Close-up of embroidered daisy flowers with yellow centers, white petals, green leaves, on white fabric.
A person wearing a cream-colored embroidered jacket with floral designs, standing next to a leafy plant with yellow berries, and shadow patterns on their clothing.
Two embroidered flowers on a light fabric background, one yellow and one multicolored with shades of pink, red, and orange, with green stems.
Artistic molding in progress with two carved rubber stamps and a sketch of land formations on paper, surrounded by carving tools and shavings on a green work surface.
A person holding a light green jacket with three patches: a black hand with outstretched fingers and the words "Pledge Allegiance to the Land," a colorful abstract landscape with clouds, and the back of a black and white illustrated character with br
A piece of fabric with a black floral design in a square, placed on a patterned textile background.
Four pieces of fabric with black stencil designs, a cutting tool, and some art supplies on a blue surface.

Playful Mending with Hikaru Noguchi,
Lora Avedian, and Nina and Sonya Montenegro
January 30, 31 & February 1, 2026

Online
Up to 90 Students
No Experience Necessary

REGISTRATION CLOSED
A simple illustration of a branch with leaves and small berries.

The heart of this online retreat explores the unique and nourishing ways we mend our beloved belongings and engage in the art of play.

Mending encourages us to repair rather than give away and invites our hands to weave stories into what we already own. A well-worn garment hints at how we move through a day, a year, a season of our life, and beckons us to embrace these moments through thoughtful, and often playful, means of mending something we love. We mend as an act of restoring and to add a personal unique mark, healing not only a physical item but our hearts too, sometimes without even knowing it. From different parts of the world, Hikaru Noguchi, Lora Avedian, and the Far Woods sisters Nina and Sonya Montenegro, will share their favorite facets of mending. We’ll darn our socks, extend the life of our clothes by using decorative embroidered motifs to cover up stains or rips, and carve a stamp to print on a patch that can be used for all kinds of repair. We’ll have options to mend for real or create a sampler, depending on the items brought to class and each individual’s comfort level.

At the end of Day One, we’ll be guided by certified yoga instructor Caitlin Rose Kenney in a gentle body movement session, and for the last half hour on Day Three, we’ll host a special presentation about mending in community. We’ll share a conversation about all the beautiful ways to share mending out into the world; talk about repair cafes and mending pop ups; mending circles and mending with children; how we can share the art of repair in public, and more. We can’t wait to take you on a journey through the wonderful ways to create a culture of repair that extends beyond our own homes.

A Care Kit will be mailed to you with special materials for this workshop experience, along with a small list of basic additional items for you to provide. The retreat recording will be available for three months with unlimited access for continued learning. New this year! We’ll host a post-retreat unstructured working session alongside our teacher team to answer additional questions and share works in progress.

    • Three different, unique workshops taught by different teachers from around the world

    • Carefully curated Care Kit by our teacher team mailed to your home

    • Community Conversation about mending in community lead by the Far Woods sisters Nina & Sonya

    • Gentle body movement session

    • Unlimited access to the retreat recording for three months

    • Bonus one hour post-retreat community mending session with our teacher team

    • Experience it all from the comfort of your own home

  • Darning Socks with Innovative Repair Techniques with Hikaru Noguchi

    Sock Darning is a little bit different than other darning. It requires strength, stretchiness, and comfort. I have been developing the most comfortable and easy sock darning methods for years and during this workshop, I will share my innovative repair techniques using tights fabric as a support to stitch the damage. We’ll talk about suitable threads for sock mending, use stretchy fabric as a support patch, and practice both round and parallel honeycomb stitching as a means of decorative repair.

  • Fixing Clothes with Decorative Hand Embroidery with Lora Avedian

    Discover how to extend the life of our clothes by using decorative embroidered motifs to cover up stains or rips in a fun and functional way. Lora will start by touching on a variety of embroidery stitches which can be adapted to different designs, with each motif relating to the theme of nature that Lora works with in her practice, and ultimately focusing on three core ones - darning, couching, and fly. We’ll talk about different styles of visible mending; explore how we can use upcycled and unusual materials for embroidery; learn how to draw our designs onto material; and discover how to make our work last, giving our clothes a new lease on life and creating a truly unique garment.

  • Playful Block Printed Patches with Nina and Sonya Montenegro

    Nina and Sonya have always seen mending less as labor and more as an opportunity to play.  When a garment springs a hole it’s a chance to experiment– in technique, material, and color-- and to have fun!  Mending invites us into a world where imperfection is allowable and even embraced. The stakes are low, the pressure is off (there’s already a hole so what is there to lose in trying to fix it?) — the playful muse feels welcome to appear.  Adding our personal touch, we can infuse a garment with uniqueness, dynamism, and lightheartedness.

    Best known for their iconic print work celebrating the natural world and Mending Life, their illustrated book of mending tutorials, Sonya and Nina will bring their passion for these two art forms together on Day Three for Playful Block Printed Patches. They will share how to carve and print two original designs onto four colorful fabric patches, and demonstrate how to adhere (sew) the patch onto a garment, jacket, tote bag, or backpack.

An older woman with short dark hair, glasses, and pearl earrings, wearing a checkered blouse, sits on a patterned chair and stitches a fabric with embroidered flowers.
A simple illustration of a leafy branch with multiple green leaves

About the Artist | Hikaru Noguchi

Hikaru Noguchi has been a leading knitted fabric designer since the early 1990s. Having lived and worked in the UK and South Africa, her work is influenced by British traditional knit patterns and craft techniques, and by South African natural fibres and landscapes. She works with small knit workshops in Scotland, Japan and the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, where attention to detail and quality are still valued, seeking a look that is sophisticated and quirky, achieved through unusual juxtapositions of colour and texture. During the last twelve years she has added traditional darning and mending techniques to her work, aiming to promote new concepts in textiles and garments.

 Author of:

Darning Repair Make Mend
Creative Mending
Beyond Daring

hikarunoguchishop.com
@hikaru_noguchi_design

Woman smiling at a craft table with fabrics and flowers inside a well-lit craft room with sewing machine and colorful wall decorations.
A simple black and white illustration of a leafy branch.

About the Artist | Lora Avedian

Lora Avedian’s work sits at the intersection of textile design and art, encompassing everything from large-scale installations at venues like Barbican Centre and the Chelsea Flower Show to exquisite, embroidered linens and soft furnishings that are sought after by the world’s best interior designers. All of Lora’s work is invested with her own deeply-held values: a passion for craft and traditional techniques, a dedication to making in small batches and in the UK, and a wide-ranging imagination and love of nature. All of these values come together to create beautiful ‘modern artefacts’, heirloom pieces that can be loved for generations.

Learning and scholarship is vitally important to Lora: her training has been a journey of exploration through the possibilities of textiles from a BA in embroidery to a Masters in Mixed Media Textiles from the Royal College of Art, with a stint along the way working in set design, which lent a sense of scale and ambition to her projects. Lora is an Associate lecturer on BA and MA Textiles at London College of Fashion in the UK and also runs workshops both independently and for organizations such as Royal Academy of Arts, Atelier Clos Mirabel and Selvedge Magazine.

 Author of:

Stitch in Bloom

loraavedian.com
@loraavedian

Two women, one standing and smiling, the other sitting with a neutral expression, in front of a wooden background. The standing woman is wearing a colorful plaid dress and green earrings, and the sitting woman is wearing a white shirt with pink stripes.
A simple graphic of a leafy branch with green leaves on a white background.

About the Artists | Nina & Sonya

 Sisters Nina and Sonya Montenegro are menders, printmakers, illustrators, and mothers who have been collaborating as The Far Woods Creative Studio since 2013. Together they wrote and illustrated Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts which combines mending tutorials with rich illustrations and a spirit of repair.  They are currently based in the Midwest.  

 Author of:

Mending Life: Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts

thefarwoods.com
etsy.com/thefarwoods
@thefarwoods

Child wearing black socks with colorful circular patterns in red, blue, and white, sitting on a multicolored surface, with a person in a blue and white striped shirt in the background.
A simple illustration of a leaf with three elongated leaflets.

Online Retreat Schedule

Friday, January 30th

9am to 12:15pm mst

Saturday, January 31st

9am to 12pm mst

Sunday, February 1st

9am to 12:30pm mst

A simple illustration of a sprig with leaves.

Retreat Experience Pricing

$315 US / $345 International

includes

3 workshop days
(9 total hours of instruction)
..
4 teachers from around the world
..
curated care kit mailed to your home (shipping included)
..
gentle movement session
..
3 months unlimited recordings
..
1 post-retreat community mending session
..
online class page with details and inspiration about this retreat

Questions? See our FAQs. We’re happy to work with you on a custom payment plan; email ali@themakerie.com.

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