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Jess from Beyond Repair | Visible Mending in Falmouth

From her sewing studio in the Old Brewery Yard in Falmouth, Jess shares her Old High Street recommendations and advice for making your own repairs. 

The biggest challenge for any passionate crafter or sewist, after the needle is thread and basic skills are acquired, can end up being space. Craft rooms become booby-trapped with boxes of bobbins and avalanches of scraps, while embroidery threads descend into impenetrable tangles.

So it says a lot about Jess that her repair workshop on Falmouth’s Old High Street is unimaginably, beautifully, satisfyingly tidy. A gallery of thread bobbins in every colour sit above the industrial sewing machine, and above that is an uncluttered shelf with yarn and scrap fabric. The silver teeth of workwear zips, from an excess in the fashion department at Falmouth University, glint in the sun from where they hang by the door. 

From this space, Jess darns, patches and stitches to give well-loved clothing a second chapter. “I studied fashion and while I love clothes, I didn't want to get into the business of making more - so I got into repair. It's great for my brain as it’s lots of short tasks, lots of problem solving and a good mix of machine work, sewing by hand and using tools. Plus, running the business side of it uses a completely different set of skills, which is a good challenge.”

"Year-round, denim is my most-repaired fabric, and luckily, it’s also my favourite material to repair (unless it’s stretchy)." But often, the repairs shift with the seasons. As the we head into autumn, Jess will be battening down the hatches on well-worn old favourites. “I start to see broken jacket zips. And the moth-eaten jumpers flooded in last autumn as soon as colder days arrived, too. Though ome people are very organised and send me their jumpers in the summer, which I love.” 

Jess's Falmouth Recommendations 

“My studio is in the Old Brewery Yard. The Chintz Bar is always keeping things super fun and lively! I’m surrounded by beautiful-smelling food all day from Restaurant Mine, and my neighbours Sara Lowes and Kareni at Kelpi are just off-the-scale brilliant. We chat over our studio walls all day, swapping advice and ideas, which is so valuable.” 

“The Old High Street is such a friendly place to work. So many of my customers live close by and are able to drop in whilst they're doing errands in town which, in my efforts to keep things local and low carbon, I love.” 

Jess's Top 3 Mending Tips

1. If you find a hole or weakness in your fabric or seams, set it aside until you can repair it. Continuing to wear and wash will make the job so much harder and sometimes ruin the chance of a good repair. Holding fabrics up to a window or light helps to check for thinning or moth damage before you get to the hole stage. 

2. Use materials you have access to, rather than getting too hung up on specific tools; old embroidery threads for sashiko style stitching, clothes that are beyond repair as patches. Using the materials you already have always looks more personal and avoids further waste. There's so much out there to use! It can also be great inspiration in terms of which direction to take a repair - follow the print on a fabric with your stitching or find a colour contrast that works. 

3. If you are patching by hand, it generally works best to match the patch fabric weight and feel to the garment you are repairing, to keep the drape of the fabric intact and strengthen it all. 

Jess will be running repair workshops in our Padstow and Falmouth shops this September for our Rewards members. Not a member? Join Seasalt Rewards for more exclusive events and offers, and early access to our sales. 

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