Monday 22 March 2021: Selina has agreed to replay her podcast from November for #mendmarch.

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Friday 13 November 2020: This month’s mending guest for Mending Mayhem is Selina. It is a bit silly how I created the name: everything was taken for Selina, so I added “am” (Amsterdam); it was also taken, at the end I added “05” because 5 is my favourite number😉

Selina is self taught and now creates her own repeatable designs. It was during the lockdown in April, when she finally had more time on her hands and she started to pick up the parked crafting skills. With old pillows and scrap fabrics, she hand stitched a denim poef. Inspired by the gorgeous works from @lindezeanne, Selina made many brooches. And after getting to know Sashiko from the Youtube channel of @sashi.co and the book “The Ultimate Sashiko Source Book” written by Susan Briscoe, Selina settled with Sashiko because the stitching process always calms her down and brings her focus back.

Selina from @selinaam05 enjoys sharing traditional Sashiko knowledge with her geometric animal designs. Selina’s first design is a cat repeat pattern which remains her personal favourite. The designing process was so much fun that before she realized, Selina had designed 17 animal patterns in less than 4 months. Selina has most samplers on her Instagram account.

Later she also used negative space embroidery technique. 

I started to design new Sashiko patterns somewhere in June when I was searching for cute animal patterns to stitch on the bib for my friend’s newborn baby, but could not find anything.

In addition to Sashiko, Selina also loves mending. Mending is a part of the path for more sustainable living. Working as a textile product developer for many years, Selina is strongly against throwing away textiles as she knows exactly how much effort and energy it takes to produce a single piece of textile item. Her goal of mending is to retain the original character of the item as much as possible and keep the mend subtle. Selina’s favourite mend is done on the collar and cuffs of a white shirt. Although the mend is visible

She found inspiration from Lindsay @lindzeanne who is a very talented textile artist living in Japan.

Selina’s background:

Selina is a textile product developer living in Amsterdam with her husband, son and two cats. She loves handcraft, Sashiko pattern design and visible mending.

She moved to Amsterdam from China to study some time ago. During her study she started an internship at a fashion agency, who later arranged a technical immigrant working permit for Selina. Since then Selina started her new journey in the Netherlands.

Selina grew up in China in the 80’s when most home textiles were still hand sewn. She learnt hand stitching from her grandma, a hardworking farm lady who made quilts and winter clothes by hand for the whole family. Just imagine how much work it was since she has 8 children! As a child, Selina was always busy with drawing, cutting paper, sewing scrap fabrics and creating fancy hairstyles for my sister. She made small gifts and cards for friends’ birthdays. But somehow Selina stopped crafting due to the busy schedule of study, and later of work and family life.