You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Arona Konaraj moved to Canada from Laos at age 4 with her family.

Her mother worked as a seamstress and spent a lot of her off-time making clothes for

Arona and her siblings.

They didn't have much money.

And I remember very vividly as a kid when she would mend the clothes, she would make

them very invisible because there was this sort of association with shame, with wearing

clothes that had holes and things were mended.

Kids would tease you because they would be like, you can't afford a new pair of jeans

or something.

Today, Arona is a fiber artist with a huge following on social media and three books to her name.

One on embroidery, another on punch needle work, and a third on mending.

But it's not the kind of many her mother did where you try to hide the repairs.

Instead, it's a style known as visible mending, where you use colorful threads, fabrics, and

decorative techniques to show off your mend.

Partly, what has changed now is that if it's become not just something that is practical

and a means of fixing something but a way of showing your creativity and also a way

of expressing yourself.

I'm Ravenna Canek and I work as an editor in the NPR newsroom.

But in my free time, I've become a person who likes to express myself by many my clothes.

Since I started a little over a year ago, I've patched my jeans with ornate embroidery,

I've woven light green and lavender patches over holes the size of golf balls and a chunky

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