My mother lived through the depression – nothing was wasted. I remember her stitching, often with mismatched threads – working late into the night, mending my Dad’s socks, darning holes in earlier darns. Making something whole again.

This mending piece was started in late December, just as the bushfires took hold. An anxious time for my farming family, with a father lost to fire in the ‘90s and siblings on the fire front in the Stirling Ranges. I tracked the fires obsessively, mending furiously. 190 hours of darning.

Then COVID 19 came. Suddenly, it was here, not over there. Further anxiety for family and friends. More mending, listening to endless hours of news, reporting something less known, less tangible. 864 hours of darning.

Mending involved cutting into, and then repairing a reclaimed, threadbare bed sheet. These actions released thousands of short resilient 35-year-old polyester fibres into the world. The Remending blanket contains these fibres.