#swiss darning

Found this beautiful lamb's wool Lyle & Scott sweater vest at a flea market last weekend! Been wanting a sweater vest for a while and finding one in the colours of the trans pride flag was just perfect.

I'll take matters into my own hands.

Custom patho sweater >::)

Had some wool socks that desperately needed mending after much wear & too little care. But I had never done darning before & that led to them waiting a year in a drawer before I could work up the nerve.

I learned a new skill; Swiss darning. Which was not as hard as it looked at first & I'm pleased with how my darning turned out. ^^ It was such peaceful work & just what I needed before Yule.

I love this thrifted wool sweater and I recently noticed a new hole in the shoulder seam opposite this hole, so I decided to redo this mend and fix that new hole.

Originally, as shown in the first picture, I sewed up this small hole with a matching color of cotton embroidery floss. However, the cotton has stayed extremely shiny so the mend wasn't even invisible and the knot of thread was occasionally uncomfortable to lean on.

I carefully unpicked the cotton thread and mended the hole again. This time I used white wool and swiss darning to cover the hole and rebuild the missing knit fabric. It was my first time doing swiss darning and I'm pretty proud even though I did it a bit wonky.

To add to the #aesthetic, I decided to frame the white darning square in a bit of feather stitch and a little leaf. I wanted to do more leaves but that stitch (fishbone, I think) is not easy to do on knits, so I did some French knots instead and I love how it turned out.

I absolutely love these socks. However, it only took a few months to wear a hole in the toe.

But luckily catching a worn spot before it turns into a hole is a much easier mend with Swiss darning! With some scrap sock yarn, I just followed the existing threads in the worn spot to “re-knit” the area.