How To Repair A Wool Blanket Tears

March Mending Month

Now, permit me merely kickoff out past saying that I am no darning skillful. My grandmother taught me how to darn when I was a kid, but to be honest, I seem to lose socks before they ever accept a chance to go holes in them! Information technology is, however, a really useful skill, whether you use it to repair holes in socks, sweaters (continue those little baggies of matching yarn that come with the sweater!), blankets, or to strengthen weakened fabric on a pair of pants or a sheet.
When you darn, yous are substantially reweaving the material; with modern knit items, it'southward a footling bit trickier considering you need a similar stretch as the base of operations material, but all the same achievable. The sometime aphorism "a stitch in time saves nine" is something anybody should pay more than lip service to: it's a lot easier to repair a small hole or threadbare fabric than a gaping vent! Repair your moth holes or tears right away and y'all'll thank yourself later. (Or expletive yourself if you don't; trust me on this one.)
I'm first going to testify you the basic technique on a wool blanket, considering it'southward a lilliputian easier to encounter the weaving concept; then I'll testify you a couple of socks that I've repaired. Adjacent calendar week, I'll include some darning techniques in a Patch 101 I'thou working on.

Darning a Blanket

Spread your work on an even surface. Choose a thread or yarn that is similar in weight to the yarn in the slice you want to repair. I chose a contrasting lace-weight yarn to darn this wool coating, partly because it makes the instructions really like shooting fish in a barrel to run into and partly because I like the wait of darning, but if you want your repair to be more invisible, pick a color that matches. Starting about ½" before and ½" below the hole, make a simple running sew. Turn your work, and head dorsum in the reverse direction, keeping the stitches even with each other.

When yous get to the pigsty itself, run the the yarn over the hole and make a few more than stitches on the other side earlier turning around. Make certain not to pull your yarn likewise tightly, equally it may shrink in the launder subsequently; leaving pocket-size loops at the stop of each row is a proficient idea.

When y'all accept covered the hole plus ½" on all sides, turn your work 90° and begin weaving through the warp you have just created, under 1 thread and over the side by side. When y'all get to the end of your row, head back in the opposite direction, weaving under the threads you lot ran over before and vice versa, every bit seen in the photo. Stitch tightly or loosely depending on the weave of the original textile. For this blanket, I darned adequately spaciously because the original weave is pretty open.

Here's a look at the other side; you could trim the broken ends of the original yarn and stitch them down, but since this is simply a throw that doesn't get washed very often, I left them as is.

I used to fold this blanket to hide the pigsty, just now I leave the darn front and center!

Darning a Sock

For cheap cotton socks, a patch (made from an old T-shirt or another sock) may piece of work best, but for overnice wool or handmade cotton socks, darning is a groovy way to keep a favorite pair in rotation longer! This is a (very old) cashmere sock that my mom gave me when I went to college on the East Coast years ago. I wore them constantly, and they've thinned at the heels. I finally put them bated when a small hole started in 1 of them; this darn takes intendance of the hole, and strengthens the worn part also.
For a sock, brand sure to plow it inside out first (unless you want the darn to be really obvious). It'southward too really helpful to use a darning egg or mushroom (a round wooden tool) or fifty-fifty just a lite bulb if you're making a repair in the heel, or a block of some sort if the repair is somewhere else in the sock. Having a difficult, smooth surface nether your piece of work helps you run your needle nether and over the warp in the 2d stage of darning.
Every bit with the blanket, I ran a series of parallel running stitches over the worn part of the sock and the hole in the middle.

I went quite a bit beyond the pigsty to strengthen the threadbare part of the sock to forestall some other hole from forming.

Hither's the completed darn; the hole is completely woven over and the balance of the worn part is strengthened.

And here'south the sock turned right side out. If I had used dark-brown yarn, y'all'd inappreciably be able to see the repair!

These last two images prove another sock darned with embroidery floss (over again, no hole, but I wanted to strengthen a threadbare patch to avoid a hole) and a darned glove.

Additional Resources
Green Fibres has a great video on how to darn if you want to watch darning in activity. It'southward a trivial long, and the repair is on a thick wool sock, which is the easiest darning to do, but information technology'south still gives you a great sense of how it all comes together.
The Vintage Sewing Reference Library has reprinted a great sewing lesson book from 1893. Scroll downwardly the folio, and you'll observe details on darning all sorts of things.
I besides like this mail service on the blog Skona Life — the author sort of figured out how to darn instinctively! If you accept socks that are a blend with some sort of elastic (many socks are), you lot could but weave in new fiber using the original threads every bit your warp, simply your repair volition exist a lot stronger if you lot stitch in your ain warp first.

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