I’ve been lucky to have a few good mending and darning projects to work on over the last month or so. One of my own, and one commission.

The cardigan of my own that I’ve been working on is yet another second-hand cashmere piece that my mum found in a charity shop. It had a few marks on it, but I absolutely love the colour, so I was wearing it around the house. I used it while knitting on my knitting machine, and I managed to rip a hole in one of the sleeves. That’s when I started to work on it!

Choosing the colours I want to work with is always the starting point for any of my projects, and I chose colours in extra fine lambswool for these cashmere mending repairs. Once I had darned the hole, I then added smaller dots of darning to cover up the stains.

The second sleeve only had marks on it, but I decided to cover them up in a way that would work with the original repair, so I used other darning techniques, but with the same colour palette.

The cardigan was missing a button, and on careful inspection I found that in a few places, the fabric was ripping where the buttons were sewn on. So I took them all off, darned the damaged areas, and had a look at my button stash. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t seem to matter how many buttons I have, they’re always the wrong colour, the wrong size, or there aren’t enough of one type when it comes to replacing a full set! So I decided to make my own, and I tried making little darned buttons, in colours and patterns to match the repairs. They’re all unique, but they all match.

I love wearing this cardigan again now- I’m enjoying the colours, and I can’t help but play with the buttons- they’re my favourite part!

If you would like to learn how to mend your knitwear, my digital mending workshop will teach you all the skills you need to get started, and get creative. I also have packs of colourful lambswool you can use for darning.

Creative Mending Commissions

I feel very lucky that people trust me to darn holes and mend their favourite pieces of clothing- it feels really special to be allowed to work on them!

One of my recent mending commissions was to repair a cardigan that used to belong to the owner’s great-grandmother. It had a hole in one of the underarms which I repaired in matching yarn, then then the cuffs had holes, there were a couple of tiny holes at the front, a few on the sleeve, and one large hole in the elbow.

I always consult people on what colours they would like. While ultimately I choose what I think will work, I ask which colours to avoid, or sometimes work colours people tell me they wear a lot. For this project I was told teals and purples, and happily I had quite a few to choose from! I mixed darning patterns together for varied effects. This may now be one of my all time favourite elbow mends!

Please do get in touch if you have a favourite piece of knitwear that you’d like me to mend (or customise!). Just send me an email (info@collingwoodnorrisdesign.com) with some photos of the damaged areas, and we can discuss it from there.

I was also sent two pairs of jeans, that had small torn/ worn areas. I used embroidery thread to repair these. I don’t normally work on anything other than knitwear, so it’s quite fun when I’m asked to do something that’s a bit different for me.

If you’d like to repair your own jeans with this method, my “How to darn a sweater” guide is the one to go for.