The mending series 01: darning

Why & how to fix those holes in your sweaters

In recent years I think people (at least inside my climate conscious bubble) have grown increasingly aware of just how much apparel we have on this planet and just how bad our current levels of over-production are. We’ve grown to understand that when we donate things to a thrift store or recycling service, those things are not magically all sold or turned into new fibers or products. In fact ~75% still end up in landfills, and unsustainable quantities are shipped to the global south.

Now, there are a million rabbit holes we could go down to try to get at the root of this (see the degrowth conversation, see the current short-comings of textile recycling). However, even after you travel down those mental pathways, we are still left with the question: what the heck do we do with the stuff we don’t want, especially the stuff that isn’t in good enough condition to sell?

And I think one of the most practical (and powerful) answers to that question is to learn to mend. While mending has been around for centuries, I’d argue it’s more important than ever in our age of cheap and easy to attain clothes. So, with all that in mind, I present to you my first post in a series of ramble-y “how to’s” aimed to get you started mending your own clothes. Today we’ll start by talking about darning.

Now what is darning?

If you look closely you can also see some darns in a brown color that match the sweater color (bottom right and left)

How I normally explain darning to people depends on their level of textile knowledge, so I’ll shoot for the middle ground here and bear with me if I over-explain. Darning is a method of patching holes in textiles where you create new fabric through weaving yarn together over the hole. It’s useful here to understand a little bit about how fabric is woven, here’s some helpful diagrams.

So essentially you are creating a little weaving inside and around the hole in your garment when you’re darning. I’d like to convince you today that darning is easier than you think it is. You don’t need to know how to knit, you just need some knowledge of the most basic hand sewing stitches.

This will make a lot more sense in the video below:

Part 1:

@frontporchthreadsYes i did ask the man at the vintage store for a major discount on this sweater #mend #darning #repair #slowdashion

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Part 2: Weaving in loose ends

@frontporchthreadsReplying to @Fox great question! #mend #mending #darning #slowfashion

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Now that you’ve seen the basics, lets look at some examples from mending club and I’ll give you some tips on materials.

Darning on Knitwear:

• I try to match the weight/thickness of my yarn with the thickness of the yarn the sweater is made of. But remember it’s great to use what you have and it doesn’t have to be exact

Two mending club attendee's darning, with a chunkier yarn used to match the weight of the sweater (her first attempt at darning!)

• Colors: this is the fun part! I love choosing colors that are contrasting with the thing I’m mending so it really tells and story and adds character, but you can also try to match the color so that the mend is nearly invisible. Some other things to consider is whether you want to use one color for the entire darn, use one for the warp and one for the weft, or play with lots of different colors in the warp and weft to create a pattern.

Darning on Woven fabric

• When you are darning on woven fabric you don’t always need to pull your fabric around an object to create a surface with tension like you do when you work with knits. For thinner woven fabrics, it might be best to o you may want to work inside of an embroidery hoop, but this may not be necessary for thicker fabrics.

• I generally go for something thinner than yarn for darning on wovens, like a sashiko thread or embroidery floss instead of yarn.

(left) My brothers old dickies that had a hole in the knee. (Right) A mending club attendees first darn on a jacket elbow. Both using embroidery floss

In this tiktok below you can see I used an apple to created tension on this woven shirt, but on these dickies above and this jacket sleeve from a mending club attendee nothing was used for tension.

@frontporchthreadsComment what types of mending you want to learn!! #mending #upcycling #lovedclotheslast #underconsumption

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A note on materials

• If you’re just starting out mending, see if where you live has any creative re-use stores! Whenever I’m in Austin to see family I stop into Austin Creative Reuse to see if there is any good needles and yarn samples

• I’d also suggest checking out your local yarn or quilting store for darning or tapestry needles, this can be a fun place to meet people and get some advice as well!

• I bet if you have any friends who knit they’ll be happy to give you some of their leftover yarn scraps from projects that you can use to darn

Some other resources if you’re interested in learning to mend:

1. I’ve made a list of mending clubs and workshops globally here, with some remote workshop options too. Feel free to reach out if you know of anything I should add to this list!

2. Books: My favorite one I’ve purchased so far is Mending Life; not only are the tutorials super easy to follow and helpful, but the writing, poetry, and illustrations are works of art in itself

Thanks so much for reading - be sure to let me know what questions you have and what mending method you want to learn next!