Saturday, November 11, 2017

Filling In

My auntie and her yarn friends hold up the blanket I am now mending, showing the biggest worn-through spot. 
The friends are all accomplished in working with fiber, and they were interested to examine the handwoven blanket, give me advice, and help me choose the right weight of yarn to mend it.

Because that gap is so big, I was going to patch it with cashmere from an old sweater rather than darning it, but I was inspired by how Celia Pym rebuilt with darns alone a tattered Norwegian sweater, below--it's a cool story (at 1granary) in itself.
 The chunks of darning have such a pleasing heft:
 

So, today I clipped the most worn area of the blanket onto paperboard, to hold it steady while I stitch some guidelines and outline the shape of the hole––in hopes that the massive darn that will fill it will lie fairly flat.

2 comments:

bink said...

When I see these mends it makes me wish I still had some beloved old sweaters that I finally got rid of because of too many holes. How wonderful it would have been if I had felt the competence to mend them at the time. Seeing you do this...and having you teach me how to darn socks...now I would try to save those sweaters...but at the time it seem way beyond my skills and abilities. i love visible mending.

Fresca said...

BINK: Me too, I wish I had that old Irish sweater I wore to shreds--remember?
I'm glad you love visible mending--me too again!