Your lovingly knitted projects are your expression of creativity and hard work. Any damage to these delicate stitches is heartbreaking. Even after a project is off your knitting needles you still mend the projects from time to time with the needles, repair hooks, crochet hooks or the ever-handy wool needle. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the technique of visible mending any knitted fabric. Visible mending is an old art form. From the first knit-sweaters for the fishermen at sea, mending has been a process to keep knitwear functional.
How Visible Mending Works
Visible mending your knitted and crocheted patterns means ensuring that frayed stitches are secured and new stitches strengthen the fabric while adding to the beauty. This can be done in various ways, however, the most common method is called "Swiss darning" also known as duplicate stitching. This only needs a darning needle, also known as wool needle and finishing needle. In the olden days, every knitter or maker owned a darning egg or darning mushroom that held the fabric taut while darning.
Why Darning works for mending?
Working another strand of yarn into already knitted stitches thickens and stiffens the fabric. For utility use, this isn't much of a problem. With this trick, a worn fabric for example a dearly-loved and used sock heel or elbows of a sweater can be mended and used to strengthen the fabric. The color match is very important for the fix to be undetectable. Many times when patching a knitted fabric a long time has passed since its making so the same yarn might not be found. But, then another shade might not be a problem if the area is not visible. If the patching is for a very noticeable area of the knitted fabric, the difference in the yarn shade might cause an ugly look. A pixelated appearance also spoils the look but we have a trick to avoid this.
The Art of Duplicate Stitches in Knitting and Crocheting
Duplicate stitches are a form of embroidery that can be easily worked on fabric as well as your knitted and crocheted fabric. To work these stitches, you do not require knitting needles or crochet hooks but your finishing needles also known as darning and wool needles.
The duplicate stitch technique gets its name because of the way the stitches are worked. The stitch follows the path of the stitch (garter or stockinette pattern) and duplicates the path of the underlying knitting. The duplicated stitches serve various purposes in a knitting project, majorly adding to the utility and the beauty.
How-to Make Duplicate Stitches
After you’ve finished your knitted fabric and the project is of your knitting needles, thread your yarn through the finishing needle. Whether you use single-pointed needles or double points or work with circulars, you can work duplicate stitches as the knitted fabric made by any of the needles are same. Make sure that the finishing needle should be a size smaller than the knitting needle used for making the fabric. This is the same for crochet too.
Step 1 - Draw up the needle from the back of the knitted fabric and go through the same path of the stitch below. If it's a reversible pattern make sure to start from the seam or go as invisibly as possible making the stitches on the front side (RS) of the project. Your needle should enter from front to back in the base of the V and exit through the center of the stitch above. Come back down through the base of the same V you started with. The path should exactly mimic the original knit stitch
Step 2 - Gently snug up each duplicate stitch and yet leave plenty of yarn on the fabric surface. This will reduce the chance of the underlying color peeping through as well as avoid the problem of collapsing the fabric with tight stitches.
In regards to getting to the next stitch, the rule is always to take the shortest route so that can reduce the bulkiness added to the fabric.
To work duplicate stitches, you either go row-wise or column-wise. This depends on the effect you would want the stitches to have to point up or down. Also, the direction can be determined by the purpose, whether it's for utility or adding to the beauty. In case, you are following a knitting pattern, you will have the exact instructions.
Besides mending, duplicate stitches can be used for decoration. Another way the stitch technique is used is to weave in yarn ends. This also works wonderfully for projects to introduce different yarn colors.
Decorating & Adding to the Beauty - The second use of duplicate stitches is on a perfectly sound fabric to add color decoration. Naturally, this uses overlap. You can easily make alphabets or images and other patterns. Here using a contrasting yarn shade is not a big problem. Here you can choose a finishing needle and yarn bigger than the knitting needle and yarn used in the project.
To combine utility with decoration, a colorful flower worked over a thinning elbow or sock heel, or a little heart over a moth hole is a wonderful option.
The handy tricks for smooth Visible Mending with Duplicate Stitches
- A secret trick to smooth duplicate stitching is to make a half stitch. As in cross-stitch embroidery, you can make half a stitch, so in duplicate stitch, you can have a partial stitch too. Knitted stitches form a V. To make a half stitch take the needle through the legs of the V. This little trick helps smoothens out the curves, reducing the pixelated stair-step appearance. This trick works best in colorwork patterns. But then the stiff knitted fabric is not preferred by knitters who are experts in all types of colorwork knitting.
- Choose a needle size larger than the knitting needle or crochet hook size.
- Use the same yarn weight as the original piece or a yarn weight thicker than used in the pattern.
- Keep a check on tension Control. Yarn tension slightly looser than the base fabric will not allow the stitches to be mended while pulling too tight will cause puckering. The duplicate stitch should lay flat against the base fabric without distorting it.
With this, get ready to make duplicate stitches in knitting. Be it the purpose of utility or adding to the beauty, these stitches are of great help. Just make sure to work with a round-tip finishing needle that goes easily through the stitches and fabric.
