My alpaca sweater, that I wear like a second skin, revealed a huge hole in the armpit! I cannot emphasise enough how much this sweater has been life for me in winter.
So, when I thought about what to do about the big hole, the spot next to it that has worn thin, and a beginning hole in the pocket I like to keep my keys in, I was reluctant to send it in for repairs again.
Pinterest to the rescue!
I remembered that back in my more active pinning days, I’d seen people fixing all sorts of holes in clothes.
Turns out, it’s called “visible mending” and it’s when you intentionally use a different colour to mend your clothes, making the mending visible.
So, I went with pink and purple for the biggest hole and learned something called Swiss darning.
The black double-layered alpaca sweater.
Let me just start by saying it is IMPOSSIBLE to take decent photos inside the house in January. With a phone. But I’m too lazy to bust out the DSLR.
And I cannot emphasise enough how much this sweater is life in winter. It was an expensive sweater, but it’s now beat up enough that I can fix it without feeling like I’m ruining someone else’s work.
I’m used embroidery thread (mistake I’ll have to fix later), because I can’t easily get yarn as thin as what the sweater has. It was a first emergency measure.
On a side note, I often think, “wouldn’t it be great to have a big house where you could have enough space for crafting stations?” – meaning I’d have enough space to leave supplies and projects within easy reach, and you can just wander around, picking up work-in-progress projects and working on them as you feel like it. It’d also make them kind of collective projects, as many people could work on the same project.
So, for the other hole in the pocket, I’m going to use something called Twill darning, which makes a more criss-cross pattern (where the Swiss darning replicates the knitting stitch).
I’m going to make that one multicolour and make it well larger than the hole, to make a kind of statement piece on the pocket. The sleeves also need to be reinforced and mended where they’ve become threadbare. In the end, my vision for this black sweater is to be a total circus, a smorgasboard of visible mending.
Learning visible mending was pleasantly easy. All you need are the right tools and you’re good to go. I’m using my grandmother’s old mushroom top (the bottom has been lost to the annals of history) and whatever assortment of needles I’ve got on hand (also hand-me-downs).
The first thing I tackled was the big black sweater’s hole in the arm, because that was threatening the structural integrity (it’s heavy and holes quickly get bigger).
My first attempt was too loose: I was afraid of tightening both the guide yarn and the mending yarn, and had to frog it and start again. Once I tightened it enough, it looked much better and covered the hole with a durable patch (this is Swiss darning):
The hold was in the armpit, which made it really tricky to keep it all straight and tight. I did all of this before I had the darning mushroom top at hand. I don’t recommend going at it without something to support the work. It can be done, sure, but it’s much better with support.
The other armhole went much better, as I finally had the use of the mushroom top.
By the time I looped back around to fix the sleeves (with yarn this time), I’d already gotten pretty habituated to the techniques and it was really fun and turned out relatively neatly. The sleeves were kind of shredded, so I had to reconstruct part of the edge (that’s where you can see the black threads peeking through).
I also fixed some holes that were a result of stress on the buttons, extending the mending as it was needed (or as I felt like continuing).
There’s still plenty more to fix on this sweater, so I’m sure I’ll be back with updates sometime in the future.
The rainbow Twill darning sweater.
Another sweater I’ve had forever and worn to absolute threads (I’m not kidding, you’ll see). I’m using rainbow yarn only to patch this one because it looks awesome.
The starting point for this sweater was a lot of machine sewed seams that have come apart (especially in the neck and armpits, a lot of pulled threads and places where it had worn really thin. Mending and reinforcing was the goal, because I love this sweater.
I just didn’t know how to fix it before, so it sat in my cupboard for years (literally) as I didn’t want to get rid of it, and thought that maybe one day I’ll find something to do with it.
I used the mushroom top for the smaller holes and to cover pulled threads, embroidery hoops when I needed to work on larger areas, and just winged it when it was an area that was impossible to support (like the sleeve ends or neckline).
The sleeve was the most worn (shredded, is an apt word) and that was the only part of the sweater I had to work flat just on the table to get it all to fit back more or less the way it had been. It’s not perfect, but I’ve got a functional sweater again!
I mostly used mostly Twill darning on the sleeve but had to use some Scotch darning as a “foundation” around the edges of the hole to build up structural support.
All of this visible mending is something that I had laying around and would pick up in the evening, or if I sat down for a longer time, such as when having a cup of tea. Neither sweater is finished as I’m wearing them and they keep wearing down more, so this is generally more of an ongoing process. But I’m letting the sweaters show me where to mend them, and then I allow myself to continue the darning as decorative as I feel like it.
The absolute best thing is that now that I’ve learned how to do visible mending, I can just do it on anything that breaks down (or needs a bit of pizazz)—no more having to be sad about throwing things away because I don’t know how to fix them. I can fix almost anything!
