Imagine creating a darning stitch for a machine; it would be concerned with a curved surface area; That is the established way of darning. That is: you do vertical and horizontal running stitches so that the hole is closed in a suitable way and thus repaired. Darning buy hand is done through running stitches with your fabric yarn.
Do you close the hole? In some way, ‘close’ is the wrong word because it may imply that you close the hole by pulling the side fabric areas over the hole. Thus there is a tightening effect. That is not darning and neither is darning covering the hole with haphazard stitches. Is darning then a kind of patch made of the same yarn as the garment or the accessory e.g. the sock.. Yes darning is in some way aiming to close or repair the hole through a patch but it does better than this! It repairs the garment through creating a ‘fabric weave’ with suitable stitching i.e. running stitches.
Darning is about the right needle; You need a special darning needle; You need too the right yarn or fabric to repair the hole; Look again at the hole and look at how 'bad' it is; You want to cover the hole. Why? You really want to repair the sock and close the hole; You want to cover the hole in the sense of repairing it; You want to make the sock, for example, more comfortable. The hole may be in the toe area or heel area; You don't want to tighten the sock; or make less space; you want to give adequate space also so that the tear or hole doesn't happen again; This is the aim of darning.
An important step in darning is to get a proper grasp on the hole; Make it easy for yourself, and aim to create a surface to work on i.e. do your running stitches suitably so that the surface is repaired. Thus make the 'hole' area part of your surface area so you can darn quickly and work accurately. The sock or the foot that it covers is obviously something curved and three dimensional. However these are not the right words. The sock is not just a 'surface' and in this way it is wise to create a curved surface to work on; Then you can sew and work over that curved surface. Remember that the sock has stretch and it is wise too to put the sock over something that gives the sock that stretch; the foot is what 'stretches' the sock ; Thus something which gives that stretch e.g. something with a curved surface is suitable.
The established way of darning is to strengthen the area around the hole by suitable stitching. Do suitable vertical stitches to the side of the hole in what might be called the horizontal line. Then turn the sock in such a way that you can stitch on top of the hole. The aim is to close the hole and you can do the stitches at the bottom instead and on the horizontal side, you can do it on the other side. You don’t have to do the darning in just two areas. You can do it in three areas e.g. top and bottom and then on one side on the horizontal or the ‘crosswards’ direction line ; or both sides. But you must stitch across the hole and two areas is enough and would create a neater finish.
Still when you have stitched to the hole, you must take the yarn over the hole to the fabric on the other side. It is recommended that you stitch beyond the hole by approximately 1/2 inch i.e on the horizontal as well as the vertical or across the hole and then downwards or upwards as the case may be.
You have probably run out of yarn on the needle. Re-thread and now work on the vertical line of the hole if you have just completed the crosswards line. The aim is to create ‘a sample piece’ of the whole fabric; The hole must have its warp and weft lines and the running stitches that you now do ‘downwards’ must blend into the crosswards stitching.
These notes also aim to aid in creating a suitable darning machine stitch. The darning stitch, you could say, is like the buttonhole stitch. Like the way the buttonhole stitch removes fabric, darning creates fabric. Note the way the stitching in darning comes from a upwards and crosswards direction. This principle is at the heart of the darning process.
Source: www.isnare.com
