In today's culture of disposable fashion, the simple art of basic darning and mending has been all but forgotten.
Well, after considerable rummaging I have turned up the directions for the Swiss darning mend mentioned in my last post. I hope you can make some sense of it. I have used it twice before, once for a bachelor friend, to fix a hole in his Sunday best sweater, and the other for another friend whose puppy had chewed a hole in her husband's brand new sweater. Oh dear. In the interests of the popularity of both the puppy and my friend I had to make that mend as un-noticeable as possible. The problem, in both cases, was that I didn't have matching wool but found as near a match as possible and both of my friends were happy with the result. The mend is started by using a crochet hook to pick up any stitches that have run, then using a thin strand of yarn connect the stitches at the top and bottom of the hole with long stitches so that you can use them as a foundation for your mend. Next take your mending yarn (the same thickness as the knitted stitches) and work back and forth across the hole in duplicate stitch, working a few stitches into the knitting at each side to ensure that the damage won't spread. Finally turn the work to the wrong side and darn all loose ends away. Your mend may not look as good as new, but it should look better than a darn. Another good way to cover a hole is to crochet little flowers to scatter all over the sweater, covering the hole with one of the flowers. - Presto! A new sweater. Though I'm not sure how a male would take to that idea for his sweater. Must go now. I hope all is well at your place. Bye for now until next time.
Have a knit sweater in need of mending? Fix it fast with a few sewing techniques like how to darn holes, fix snagged thread and frayed buttonholes.
It would be so nice if my cat was just as helpful as this pretty kitty when I'm sewing. Not Gibby! He likes to lay on my cutting mat when I'm trying to work. And if I poke him with a ruler, he bites. If I'm rotary cutting, he likes to take a swipe at the blade - I'm sure he's going to loose a couple of toes. And here he is, looking so innocent! Bad boy! I finished the last four Sylvia's Bridal Sampler blocks that I needed. Next to choose some sashing and corner stone fabric and start putting this thing together! I saw this magazine issue when I was at Michaels on the weekend. I am in serious like with the granny square quilt on the front. I didn't buy the magazine, but I went looking for the cover image for inspiration.
I remember when the only foot wear that was in style in Singapore was slippers and.... well, that was it! It was probably more convenient (and less of a pong) to slip on the slippers and pop down to the market or hawker centre, than say put on a pair of trainers. Times have changed - I see more covered shoes, which means more socks and even more holey ones too! In last year's The Get Redressed Challenge, I managed to try out darning socks. I had used the weaving method. Here are my sweet pink socks from the mend: Duplicate Stitch I was really with happy with how it turned out, and after that I decided to focus on the football socks. The holes were a lot bigger and because football socks need a substantial amount of stretching I decided to use a different method of darning - DUPLICATE STITCH. This meant replicating the same knitted stitches in the areas to be reinforced as well as in the hole. Well, it was an ambitious attempt because: 1) I had forgotten that football socks are reinforced with a lot of elastic and were a lot thicker than normal knit socks; and 2) the knit in football socks is hideously tiny! And so, what started off as a small project ended up being a "darn" problem! The initial step was pretty straight forward - define area to be mended and reinforced. I used a jam jar instead of a darning egg and inserted it into the sock (pulled inside out). This expanded the sock making it easier to see where I needed to sew the warp strands using normal cotton thread (image below, left). I then proceeded to do the substitute stitch..... I was only on the first row when I became extremely impatient - yes, that's right. The normally zen me was becoming frustrated. I'm not sure whether it was the needle I had chosen but the elastic in the sock was becoming an impediment to my progress! So in the end I decided to weave using embroidery thread. In case you are wondering what duplicate stitching looks like, here is a video! After abandoning the idea of duplicate stitching, I reinforced the weave with warp threads ie. covering the green sewing thread. Here it is in the image below, I continued the weaving streak with another pair of football socks. I am staying away from the duplicate stitch for an indefinite period! What type of darning method do you use? This is part of the Fix It Friday series! Don't forget to pop over to Little Did You Know and see what she's been up to with her mending. Until next Friday!
This 100% organic non–mulesed wool has been dyed using infusions of completely natural ingredients such as walnut, rhubarb, indigo and juniper.Its even thickness and gentle twist make it perfect for hand embroidery, cross stitching, punch needle, weaving and mending. Crewel wool thread is used as a single strand, and c
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darning (mending) wool (gamla stoppgarner)
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In today's culture of disposable fashion, the simple art of basic darning and mending has been all but forgotten.
