One of the first steps when I get a piece is an initial evaluation to make sure everything is ready to be worked on. It always helps when clients secure stitches and mark the areas that need to be worked on. In this paticular case, a hole had developed in a supremely soft knit afghan… clearly it needed repairing to be used this winter! I feel like the end of 2020 has been a year of wanting to snuggle under a blanket, especially as in the Northern Hemisphere it’s getting cold.
hole in white knit throw held together with safety pins
The first step of a repair is sorting out the hole and making it tidy – this way I can see what I’m doing and what I’m dealing with. Often clients send me lots of pictures, which helps, but there are sometimes surprises! I’ll start forming my plan of attach here as I tidy up my edges and pin things out of the way.
opened up hole in cream knit afghan ready to be repaired
Now that the hole is nice and open, I can see there’s a dropped stitch at the bottom, and I’ve got a sense of the pattern a bit more. At this point I’m going to try and make the hole a square or a rectangle so I can work on repairing row by row.
loose stitches on locking stitch markers, ready for reweaving
Now that I have the dropped stitch laddered up in pattern, and the rest of the stitches on locking stitch markers, the piece is ready to repaired. I’ll use swiss darning to close up the hole in pattern.
And that’s the first step to working on a repair!
Below: I’ve been playing with doing time lapses of my repair work, often posting them to my Instagram account. I thought I’d share this quick time lapse of getting the hole ready for darning.
Want to learn more about swiss darning and reweaving? Check out my Darn It class on both Interweave and Craftsy!
Know someone who is in need of Textile Repair? Don’t hesitate to reach out using my contact form!
