This week I’ll talk about Swiss Darning. This darning method is most like knitting. It is essentially duplicate stitch, but with no base fabric to work on. It is quite fiddly, and time consuming to work. But it looks the absolute best in knitted fabric, so would be a very good option for a repair that is in a noticeable spot.
It’s so fiddly that I ended up filming this tutorial about three times. lol. It still ended up very long (even speeding up some sections) so I apologize for that. Hopefully maybe it’s still helpful, even if it’s insanely long.
In the tutorial video below, I show you one way to work this, using a tapestry needle to make the loops using a support structure of sewing threads. Another way you could work this is to use a dpn or crochet hook to pull up loops in each row of the repair. When using this method, I use a new strand on each row, and thread it straight across (spanning the gap), leaving very long tails on either side. Then I pull up the new stitches with a crochet hook in a column (like when you repair a dropped stitch) up until the next to last repair row. I place this stitch on a dpn and do the next column. When I have all stitches on the dpn, I work the last row as a kitchener stitch to join the repair to the live stitches at top. This method works well for very large repairs, but you end up with lots of tails to weave in later. A benefit is that it is fairly easy to adjust the tension across each repair row, as long as you do that before weaving in the tails. (I may film a video showing you this method as well at some point.)
One drawback to the method I show you below is that it is hard to adjust the tension of the repair stitches after the repair is complete. Make sure you have each stitch at the right size as you go. I use this method when the repair section is fairly small.
Anyway, here is the video – I hope it is helpful!
Until next time, Happy Knitting!!