Hand Sewing Foundations for Repair with Joy Mao

This class is part of the six-part virtual Mending Series II. Classes may be purchased à la carte at $75 or as a six-part package for a discounted price of $400. 

Every sewer seems to have their own arsenal of stitches and tricks—collected over a lifetime of both practice and study. Over the course of her career in fashion and textile art (as well as her own personal mending projects), Joy Mao has identified a selection of hand-sewing stitches that have proved most useful for common cases of mending: patching up holes, taking up hems, replacing or reinforcing threadbare areas. This class aims to provide a foundational overview of hand-sewing techniques that will inspire and empower students to tackle all their mending projects to come.

Date + Time

Friday, September 5, 2025, 12 - 2:30 pm ET

Location

Zoom, a link will be emailed to participants the day before class.

Cost

$75 for the individual class
$400 for the series

Scholarships 

We have two scholarships available for this experience. To be considered for a scholarship please fill out the scholarship application form.

Our Teacher

Joy Maois a Chinese American fashion designer and textile artist based in Brooklyn, New York—using clothing as a medium for illuminating the bonds between self and society. How do our clothes shape the way we understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and the ways we move through our worlds? How can fashion support and sustain life, rather than exploit it?

Her work recognizes and celebrates human effort—the kind of labor that people engage in, both individually and in community with others, to create with care. Though this kind of effort derives from a deep and transformative place of love, it is often overlooked and undervalued. Joy designs and constructs intimate spaces—from clothing to gathering places—to support those who work to build a more just and beautiful world.

Joy holds a BA Fundamentals from the University of Chicago and an AAS Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design. From 2021-2024, she was a Creatives Rebuild New York Teaching Artist at The W.O.W. Project in Manhattan Chinatown. In 2025, she founded a collaborative slow fashion studio called Chores (@chores.world), which tells intimate community stories through annual collections of small batch clothing, accessories, home goods, and artwork.

Learn more about Joy's process on Instagram (@byjoymao) and Substack (joymao.substack.com).

*All classes in this series will be recorded. A link to the recording will be emailed to all students following the live session. You may purchase the series as a whole even after the classes have begun. You will be emailed the recordings upon sign-up.