When I started my quest to save fabric I started with darning. And it's a good place for you to start if you are looking to mend clothing and linens rather than throwing them away. In my view, fixing things is a forgotten skill in our age.
You can darn by hand or darn by machine. Darning by hand requires very little equipment and minimal skills. You need embroidery floss, an embroidery needle, scissors and a darning egg, which will help you keep the shape of the item and keep you from catching the other side of the fabric if you are mending something tubular like a sock or the knee of kid pants.
Because I try to use what is around, my darning egg is not one specifically designed for sewing. My darning egg is a large green plastic Easter egg that I picked up at a junk swap at my workplace.
You can make your darning more or less noticeable depending on whether you want visible mending or invisible mending.
Here is one example of a sock I darned by hand using a contrasting embroidery floss.
Here is an example of towel I mended using a sewing machine. This is less noticeable and happily I extended the life of this towel by 18 months and counting.
I will share more information in an upcoming post on how to utilize these techniques, but I want you to first know that we can all fix things rather than throwing them away.
