! Quick darning - PEP BB textile.sand.darn

These badge bits are good incentive to get things done... I did some darning for the first time. It was educational. I mended my pants and my son's.

Badge Bit
I have tons of hand-me-down thread, but none are darning type.  A couple Staff notes say it doesn’t qualify unless using thicker thread, but I noticed on another submission the suggestion from a Staffer to use multiple strands of thread.  So, I doubled up the thread I have on hand — let’s see what the Permigods have to say!



What I learned
First attempt with Bob
I figured that thousand-mile stare would motivate me to darn faster and better to cover up his evil grin; found the fuzziness of the tennis ball was distracting (for me as a noob darner).


I dropped the ball and forgot to turn the sock inside out on this first darn attempt! Oh well...



Second try: Rawley


Right off the bat I liked the bright white much better than Bob’s face for contrast to see my stitch pattern.

On the home stretch stitch: halfway through the Green Monster, I outlined the area I was working on with a chalk pen.  It seemed to make the project less daunting for some reason.

I can see that a flat or mushroom-type darning thingie would be ideal — it threw me a curve trying to run a straight stitch across the length of this mend.

Catch them earlier — smaller hole faster and easier to fix!

Thicker mending thread would probably decrease the time to finish — even doubled over, what I have vs. size of the Monster hole was a task.



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Lastly, I’m going to leave this here: SPEEDWEVE DARNING LOOM
Look it up.  You know you want to.

Here goes my first bb attempt. I’m glad to be giving some loves socks a new life.

Excited to post my first submission! I darned a large-ish hole in a pair of jeans. I patched another hole in these jeans and will be posting for that BB shortly too! I used cotton thread because I wanted to get a feel of what it would be like if I did proper invisible mending, working with the threads left in the fabric. I'm still a ways off from that skill, but it was an interesting learning experience. I used an embroidery hoop to hold things steady for me.

The hole:


My set up, including thread and needle:


Progress photo, just using the remaining threads to build up a new fabric:


Finished work, after I went in the other direction weaving between the threads from the first step:


The fabric in the surrounding area is still week and will need a patch eventually, but this was a great learning experience for me.

I darned (another pair of) socks!

As at least one other Permie here has pointed out and my own experience darning with both kinds has demonstrated, wool is significantly better for darning socks than synthetic/acrylic yarn because it felts and becomes stronger in the wash. I used a tennis ball for a darning egg, wool yarn, and a darning needle. I darned a wider area than the holes themselves in order to reinforce the socks against wear and make them feel more even underfoot.

I had a really hard time at first, but my big sis came to the rescue with some encouragement. So I got up, brushed myself off, and kept going! I'm really happy with the result, and hope you are to!

DARned my holey sock.

Darn it my sock almost have a hole. Does it count?

Does anyone else have problems with poor fitting shoes or boots... I do, one foot is a tad bigger than the other and having wide feet doesn't help when most shoes are very narrow.
Who came up with the idea of just using 1 measurement for shoes... sure it's cheaper to make and distribute. Anyway my boot seem to have chafed my sock?

Darn it you say.

Trying to source locally made wool proved to be difficult, so I had set for wool that is made in Japan. At least it's the same country.
I started darning it and after while I had many many loose ends because I don't know what I'm doing.
After tugging at the ends they didn't seem to move at all so instead of tieing off the loose ends I snipped them off, it's quick darning. We will see if it holds up or not.

Hopefully this qualifies for a bb.

I just used random yarn that was swimming in the bottom of my stash. Pretty sure it’s polyester, but this is my first try so I didn’t want to buy anything new. Happy accident that I had some purple.

The yarn was 4ply which would have been too thick. I pulled it apart and used it as 2ply.

I used an egg-ish shaped rock as my darning egg. It worked fine.

First time darning–found it surprisingly relaxing!