Is Earth Month over yet? I wanted to sneak in one more “save” on the blog before ambling over to the new fabric stash.  Do read through to the end, since I’ve included a couple of sundry stuff. Heh.

From the bowels of her closet, my daughter pulled out a hole-damaged cashmere pullover. Some “visible mending” ensued, heartily approved by the owner of said pullover.

Traditionally, darning is supposed to be invisible — but that is so old school.  The new darn is not just visible — it makes it’s presence felt. That, my friends, takes darning/mending to an art form level in an appealing, organic way.  I was inspired by the posts of @visible_creative_mending on Instagram, and very taken with more online inspiration from other similar things made by talented creatives. 

Although this is simple darning, I figured there must be some tips and such to achieve the look; and I ended up buying the 4 page basic instructions from the above IG account. The instructions are basic. 

Here are a couple of tips I thought may be useful to you:

Mark around the damage/hole either with chalk or thread, or you can follow the wales of the knit to create a vertical “warp” over the hole.  Give a substantial border around the hole area. I used my tiny stash of cotton embroidery floss, although cashmere yarn of the same weight as the sweater would have been ideal.

Cut a substantial length of floss so that you do not run out mid-square. I used a length of almost one yard. Cotton floss is smooth and doesn’t knot during the process. Do not use metallic floss or other metallic yarn, tempting though it is. It sort of tears through the knit instead of gliding through smoothly.

My first square is the red/blue and you can see that I used a lazy daisy stitch on two sides to hide shoddy needle action.  With the green square I decided to continue outside the darned square with a running stitch, ending at random spots rather than evenly lining up. 

Use a darning egg if you have one, or improvise with sundry items around the house. I thought about this too late, but it would have been a great help!! Tsk.

Sundry stuff I found here and there….

What do you think of this Balenciaga’s Pre-Fall 2021 coat? Doesn’t quite fit the traditional design aesthetic of the prestigious design house — but what do I know.

One more:

“high-end labels tend to have stock rooms filled with prototypes, samples, and unfinished garments with no end use” A link for you before I go:  the words above wouldn’t leave my head after reading this article by Vogue: What Should be Upcycled

Stay safe, my friends! See you next time where we’ll talk about who-knows-what.

Samina