The Tailor Who Mended Everything
- 3 minute read
- Ages 5-9
- Bedtime Stories
There was a tailor whose shop was so small that two customers could not stand in it at once.
He made clothes when people asked him to, but that was not really what he did. What he did, most days, was mend.
A torn sleeve. A pocket coming away. A hem that had dropped. A button that had gone.
What came in
People brought him things that were not worth the money he charged.
A child's shirt with the elbow out. A school bag with a strap giving way. A quilt that had been in a family for forty years and had come apart along one seam.
He mended all of it, and he never once said that a thing was too far gone.
He would look at it, and turn it over, and say the same short sentence every time.
"Leave it with me."
The quilt
The quilt took him three weeks.
It belonged to an old woman down the lane and it had been made by her mother, and the cotton had gone thin in patches and the seams had let go in several places at once.
He did not replace the worn parts, which would have been quicker. He backed them from underneath with new cloth and left the old cotton showing on top, thin as it was, so it still looked like her mother's quilt.
When she came for it she stood in the doorway holding it and did not say anything for a while.
"You could have made me a new one for less."
"I could," said the tailor.
The evening
He worked until it got dark and then he stopped, because he sewed by daylight and would not use a lamp for close work.
He put the shutters up and swept the floor and put the day's threads in a tin, because he kept them, and went upstairs.
And what was left downstairs, on the counter, folded in a row, were the things that were going home tomorrow: a school bag, two shirts, a curtain, and a small blue coat belonging to somebody who was almost certainly asleep by now.
All of them coming back a little better than they went away.
That was the whole of his day and he had done it for thirty years and he had never once thought of it as anything remarkable.
Moral of the story
Almost nothing is finished the first time it breaks. The tailor's whole trade was noticing that, and he never made a speech about it.
Questions and answers
- What did the tailor mostly do?
He mended things rather than making new ones, though he could do both.
- What did people bring him?
Torn sleeves, dropped hems, missing buttons, a school bag with a failing strap and an old quilt that had come apart.
- How did he repair the old quilt?
He backed the worn parts from underneath with new cloth and left the thin old cotton showing on top.
- Why did he do it that way rather than the quicker way?
So that it still looked like the quilt her mother had made.
- What was on the counter at the end of the day?
A school bag, two shirts, a curtain and a small blue coat, all going home the next day.
Word meanings
- hem
- The folded and sewn edge at the bottom of clothing.
- seam
- The line where two pieces of cloth are sewn together.
- shutters
- Wooden or metal covers closed over a shop front.
- remarkable
- Unusual enough to be worth noticing.
Questions about The Tailor Who Mended Everything
What is the moral of The Tailor Who Mended Everything?
That most broken things can be made useful again, and that the person who does it quietly rarely thinks of it as anything special.
Why is this a good bedtime story?
Nothing happens quickly and nothing is at risk. It ends with a row of folded things waiting to go home, which is a settling last image.
How long does it take to read aloud?
About four minutes at a slow pace.
What is a good question to ask afterwards?
Ask the child what in the house has been mended rather than replaced. Most homes have more of these than anyone realises.