I’ve had “blog coming soon” on this website for way too long…
I’m not a writer by trade, but I am a person filled with ideas, opinions, observations, and creative interests that I’d love to share with people who are drawn to the same things I am. My hope for this space is that it becomes more than just product updates or mending pictures — I want it to be a place for learning, sharing skills, exploring creativity, and having thoughtful conversations about the things connected to sewing, mending, sustainability, and handmade culture.
Although I may not outwardly express it in an in-your-face way on social media, I’m very much a “politics are in everything” kind of person. I find it impossible to speak about sustainability, fashion, mending, or art forms that have historically been dismissed because of the gender of the people creating them without also touching on politics, social injustice, labor, consumerism, or inequality.
That doesn’t mean this will become an overwhelmingly political blog, but it does mean I want this space to have depth. I want us to learn things here. I want us to think critically about the systems we participate in while also making beautiful things, sharing knowledge, and finding joy and community through creativity.
I firmly believe that knowledge is power, and that we are all participating in acts of resistance simply by being here — by being interested in visible mending, reusing, upcycling, repairing, or simply creating beautiful things because they make us happy and feel therapeutic.
Soooo… how did I get here?
What is now Socorro Society began in 2009 in Austin, Texas after I graduated from college with a degree in Public Administration. I graduated in 2007 and spent 10 months interning in Washington, D.C. in the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Treasury. I stayed beyond my original internship contract because I planned to go to grad school and hoped to eventually be hired into the position I was working in.
Over the following months, as a “MGMT” millennial (listen to what I mean here) during Bush’s lame-duck presidential year, I grew tired of government work and the bureaucracy of it all. I decided to move back home and return to school — this time to pursue interior design. That lasted about three semesters, but it solidified something important for me: I wanted a creative career.
I left San Marcos for Austin and began working for a temp agency. As a broke college graduate without a clear career path yet, I started thrifting and revamping office attire so I could save money and avoid looking like a literal 1980s secretary. Eventually I started selling vintage clothing under the name Loving Cup Vintage, and by 2011 I was reworking, painting, or embroidering most of the pieces we sold and selling clothing in a vintage shop off North Loop called The Green Door.
Around that same time, I decided to get my cosmetology license and began a career in Austin’s independent film industry doing hair and makeup, which put a halt to reselling until I moved back to San Antonio in 2015. That’s when I started selling vintage clothing again, this time as Socorro Society.
I never set out to be a “sustainable brand.” I became aware early on that sustainability was beginning to enter mainstream conversations, and I understood that reselling secondhand clothing was, by its very nature, sustainable. We’ve been using the hashtag #FashionablySustainable since 2015.
In 2017, I began teaching embroidery classes that I marketed as “learning how to breathe new life into clothing already in your closet.” We shifted into selling only reworked clothing and creating scrap-fabric products made from upcycled textiles. Again, this was always rooted in necessity. I needed to sell more, but I didn’t have the money to invest in creating something entirely new, so I made something new from what I already had. That has always been the ethos of Socorro Society.
And this was all before visible mending I started on my visible mending and sashiko journey.
So what can you expect to see here?
A mix of free patterns, fun DIYs, tutorials, thoughts and observations, with some information and news sprinkled in along the way. I’m incredibly grateful for the internet and that our reach extends beyond the boundaries of my homebase in Texas. I’d also love for this to become a place for crowdsourcing ideas and sharing the ways you all create community around mending and sewing where you live.
I love hearing about the mending circles and sewing groups you all have. Sharing is caring, and that’s a huge reason why I love offering so much of our content for free. My hope is that whether people buy my products or not, they can still learn how to mend what they own through our videos and tutorials alone.
The next post will include a free zipper pouch pattern I’m really excited about. While I do plan to release some paid patterns eventually, offering free quick projects and scrap-fabric ideas is my main goal with sewing patterns. I hope that if you’ve been wanting to sew — or have been wanting to finally pull out that sewing machine for the first time — these beginner-friendly projects help give you the confidence to keep trying new things.
I’m glad you found your way here. I hope this becomes a space where we can connect a little more, where I can share more about myself and the things I’m passionate about, and where we can continue learning from each other along the way.
