I haven't tried it myself but we had a speaker at my monthly sewing club who collected traditional garmnts from China and Japan and had a beautiful collection of repaired garments using sashiko and other techniques - many of them were very old and had been repaired many times (including the repairs)! The process for making them in the first place (they were mainly made from hemp, by hand) was so arduous and time-consuming that there was great value in maintaining them as long as possible. Environmentally, the same is true for us today.