How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

Bringing bedraggled hearts, bits, and bobs back to life

Feb 15, 2026

It all started Wednesday, on my day off. Like we all do from time to time, I was feeling a bit out of sorts, at loose ends with a list of chores that mattered zilch to me because my ‘brain was itching’. I use this phrase to describe the urge to create something.

While getting dress, I’d noticed my favorite towel, a floral pink wonder, hanging there looking bedraggled. It’s not very old, but had some kind of defect from the factory because the binding on one edge and a large section of the body of the towel had begun fraying and running. It irritated the hell outta me, lighting the ‘fix it’ spark inside my itching brain. I removed it from the rack and thought ‘to the surgery’, more commonly called my ‘she shed’, or my craft room/office.

As far back as I can remember I’ve repurposed things. I’ve redecorated rooms, changed color palettes with fabric, pillows, and curtains and I’ve rearranged rooms to give them a new life. It’s no secret that color fascinates me. I use it to create, change, or uplift mood as well as reinvent a space.

In the case of my bedraggled towel, when I looked at it I was suddenly, inexplicably tired. More tired than I remember being in a very, very long time. Like my heart, which has been knocked around by life lately, my towel was having trouble living up to it’s full glorious-pink-floral potential in its current condition. Although I have all the tools to mend things I hadn’t cared for anything in that very tender way in years. I immediately decided to change all that.

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While capturing this project step by step for you, I felt a deepening sense of significance. The significance was this - focusing my mind and hands on mending this poor towel created something long-lasting, while simultaneously realizing that this towel with it’s Frankenstein repair and ‘valentine’ hearts also soothed my bruised heart. Mending had turned a key inside that unlocked a subtle joy at the restoration of both.

I had forgotten how meditative mending can be, gripping my attention until the job is finished. General mending of zippers, hems, and buttons requires little finesse. But this project evolved into artistry earned by focus, color, and the gentle unwinding of a tension I didn’t recognize until it had completely unraveled. The fingers on my right hand became very sore, because it had been a long time and my hand-eye coordination was out of tune. Until I got in the groove, I jabbed myself in my right middle finger with the very sharp needle multiple times, leaving the tender memory behind for days after my triumph. It’s a good soreness, when we earn it by accomplishing something, isn’t it? There’s nothing like that poignant after affect no matter how long it lasts.

The pain is gone but I’m left with a beautiful reminder that like our mended things, we humans have so much potential to bounce back again and again, renewed by love, time, and consideration.

If you’re interested in how I did this, I described the process in detail below. Also, at the end of this post is a sneak peek at the next upcycle I’ve planned because I’ve opened a door to a new creativity remix and plan to write about them as I go.

After removing the failed edging and disintegrating towel, I found some items I no longer used and removed ready-made binding from them for consideration. I preferred the red, because the contrast was dramatic and because it was valentine’s week putting me in a deeply red mood. Then my eons old seam ripper opened the red binding from the hand towel readying it for use on my pink towel.

Cleaning up the rot, choosing dramatic red, preparing red binding.

Next, in keeping with the wonderful red drama I chose deep burgundy thread instead of the white I considered. As soon as I chose the red fabric, the train had left the ‘perfection’ station headed for wonky wowsville, where showy and imperfect stitches were all the rage. I went so far as to use some of the body of the red hand towel to fashion two plump, waffle-textured hearts taking this up another notch by keeping some of the fringe across the tops of both hearts.

The selection process, whip stitch the injury closed, back stitch the binding.

When the materials were displayed together, it was obvious the red and burgundy stole the show. Zooming in on the flipped corner shows the right and wrong sides of the towel. Flipping to the wrong side of the towel, I closed the gap where I’d removed the flawed towel by pinching together the two sides of the cut and whip stitching it shut. To whip stitch, push the needle horizontally through both edges of the fabric and pull it through snugly. There are ways to close an opening that creates a perfectly abutted seam, but I wanted the burgundy thread to show a trace of a Frankenstein scar.

After closing that wound, I prepped the binding by manually folding a millimeter across the end so no raw edge was left behind. Then I pinned the red binding over the edge of the towel to hold it in place while I sewed. To attach the binding, I used a back stitch working from left to right as right-handers do. In the picture you can see why it’s called a backstitch. The first stitch comes up through the binding and towel a millimeter or so to the right of the left-most edge. Then you go back to the left-most edge and go down through the fabrics with the needle, then come back up through a millimeter or so to the right of that stitch. This is repeated across the binding until the right-most edge of the work is reached. What you can see are small, mostly even stitches like a sewing machine would make. Mending is hand work, so I chose not to use the sewing machine.

I attached the hearts with small ‘x’ stitches around the entire outer edge of each heart. X stitches are exactly what they sound like - one stitch from top to bottom leaning leftward and another one on top of that leaning rightward. I chose to do this because the weave in the red waffle fabric was very loose, which will make it prone to fraying. Zig-zag edges, cutting fabric with pinking shears which leave a zig zag edge, or applique (pronounced app-li-kay) would all stop this from happening but I didn’t want any of those looks for this project. So I used x’s tightly nestled together in hopes that the right and left stitches would confound any fraying in the wash. I also left a bit of the hand towel fringe to give these hearts an ‘electric’ look if you will. If you zoom in on this shot, you will see the x stitching.

Do you upcycle? Do you love or hate the brilliantly imperfect finished towel?

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