With that said, we thought to share how to do a simple scotch darn method, so you can do this simply at home. If you are a complete beginner, it is great to start with a piece you are not too attached to, just to practice. Here is a very old much used British Wool jumper, the classic hole positions are well worn areas like elbows and cuffs.
The tools are not very expensive, you do not need much, you can find these on second hand sites, charity shops, or even borrow from friends. You would need a scissors to cut extra scrap, embroidery hoop, pins, needle with a thick darning end, scrap knit or fabric and any bright coloured yarn.
With the scotch darn, it is best to anchor your repair with another piece of fabric, ideally contrast colour to compliment the look, ideally similar thickness and same composition, this way the fabric behaves in a similar way, especially when washing after repair. Cut the fabric to fit under the hole, with plenty around the hole to be able to sew into place.
To keep the scrap fabric in place, pin this around the hole, add the embroidery hoop, some knits can be quite chunky so the hoop may not be perfectly tight or snug, it is OK as you only need to keep this in place.
Using contrast wool yarn, do a simple runner stitch to keep the scrap fabric in place, does not need to be perfect as it will be hidden once the darning is complete. Take our you needles out. At this stage the embroidery hoop can be taken out, if it bothers you, I prefer to keep it as it makes mending easier for me.
Start the repair by using the contrast colour wool, I use any scrap I have in the workshop. Do this from the bottom around 2cm outside of the hole, but you can make it as wide as you like, the bigger the surface area, the longer the repair will take. This repair uses a very wide stitch approach, rather than tightly stitched for visual purposes. You create the stitch by threading from underneath, no knot needed on the underside, leave a tail inside to thread through at the end. Create a ‘C’ shape, bring the thread out and around and circa 4mm on the right, repeat this process.
Keep sewing through this repair onto the inside, going round and round until you reach the middle, making sure you go all the way through to the scrap fabric. If the yarn finishes half way through, simply weave the back in and start a new thread from where you left off. Take off the embroidery ring and do not forget to sew in the back ends of the yarn for a nice neat finish.
Although we are happy to mend, repair, upcycle, recycle etc for customers, we always encourage for customers to try to do this themselves, with that, we occasionally have live visible mending, darning workshops, keep an eye for our next one on our events page here. Workshops are irregular but keep posted on our newsletter
