Commentary
On Tuesday afternoons, I load up our van with meat boxes for the farmers market. Afterward, we make our one weekly trip to Costco to buy the few organic staples we can’t grow on the farm. Usually all the kids come, and more often than not we end the errand run with dinner out as a family.
This week, as I walked through Costco’s aisles, I became suddenly aware of the patches on my husband’s and my son’s clothes. We still patch our clothes. Not because we can’t afford to buy new ones—we could probably find a pair of work pants for less than $40—but because I’ve come to believe the true cost of clothing is much more than what shows up on the price tag.
Most of our patches are made from felted wool. Years ago, I even started a business making blankets out of recycled sweaters, and I still have a shipping container full of wool waiting to be turned into blankets, rugs, and oven mitts. Life got busy, and the project paused, but I discovered felted wool makes a durable patch with just enough give. On this day, my son had patches on both knees; my husband had one on the seat of his pants and another between the legs.
And as I looked around Costco, I realized—not one other person I saw had patched clothing.
Why don’t we patch anymore? Is it because most people don’t know how to sew? Because it isn’t fashionable? Or because clothing has become so cheap, outsourced to the lowest bidder across the globe, that mending hardly seems worth the effort? Probably it’s a mix of all three.
But for me, patching is about value. Those pants my husband wears began as a cotton seed a farmer planted and tended. That farmer likely hasn’t seen a price increase for his cotton since the 1970s, while his costs for seed, fertilizer, and fuel have risen steadily. From seed to harvest, to ginning, spinning into thread, weaving into fabric, cutting, sewing, packaging, shipping—it is astonishing that all of that labor and resource use results in a pair of pants delivered to our doorstep for under $40. It feels almost impossible. In truth, it is impossible without subsidies that mask the real cost.
So when I mend, I’m not just saving money. I’m honoring the chain of hands and the land that produced this garment.
The environmental cost is also real. Cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops on earth. If all that spraying, irrigating, processing, and pollution has already happened to bring one pair of pants into being, why would I casually discard them when a patch can extend their life? My kids play hard, and my husband works hard. Clothes wear out, and of course we buy new ones sometimes—often used from thrift stores—but a patch is a pause, a way of respecting what has already been taken from the earth.
Over time, my children have come to love their patches. Some are sewn by me, some by their grandmother. They actually prefer hers—sometimes setting aside worn clothes until Grandma’s next visit because “she does it better.” What began as necessity has become part of our family story. The patches remind us of the hands that repair, the stories stitched into fabric, and the quiet resistance against a culture of disposable everything.
To some, it might seem quaint, or even a waste of time. But to me, it’s about recognizing value. It’s about slowing down long enough to notice the work and the cost—human, environmental, and spiritual—that goes into everything we consume. A patch is not just a fix. It’s a statement: this matters, and I refuse to treat it as disposable.
