A while ago, I talked about very old technique called darning. I used this technique to mend a pair of hand knitted slippers and I also patched a pair of my jeans using darning too.
Both projects turned out with fun looking patches. I especially love the patched pair of jeans. Recently I found there was a hole in my son’s pajama pants at the knee (of course). Other then this little hole that was forming they were in good shape, so I definitely wanted to mend the pajama pants. And I wanted to share this with you too, incase you have your own clothing that could also be mended in this way.
The one issue I thought of was that these pants were made of a thin material that seemed fairly delicate, especially compared to everyday wear pants. I wouldn’t be able to mend them well with a patch of another clothe since I didn’t have any thin fabric on hand. But then I thought I should try the darning technique on these pants too.
The thing I found most interesting about darning is that it is really similar to weaving. To start you set up your threads in one direction across the hole. I think of these first lines as the “warp” threads. After those threads go all the way across the whole, you then start adding threads in the perpendicular position, just like you would with weft threads. As you put in the “weft” threads you weave them over and under the “warp” threads you put in. The difference with darning is that you’re also sewing the thread around the hole so that the fibers are prevented from un-raveling more.
I wasn’t sure how well I could mend them with darning, but the mend turned out really well. I new I didn’t want the mend to turn out super bulky so I used light weight sewing thread. This thread worked out much better then I expected. The fibers are now secured and will most likely not fray again and the mend isn’t too noticeable, which is a bonus.
You can find the steps of the denim darning patch here. I used these exact same steps when mending the pajama pants. I also have some pictures on how I used darning to mend the pair of hand knitted slippers here.
Happy Weaving!
Kate
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