"Your mother was always a mender"

Just in case anyone wonders about this, it is a reference to the highly-skilled job still known as "burling and mending" in which newly-woven cloth is inspected for faults by feel and eye, then invisibly corrected. The job is found in the woolen-textiles industry, I don't know of an equivalent in cotton textiles.

Rather a nice picture here to give you an idea.