Who in their right mind mends storebought socks? Ahem, that would be me… But only if I happen to like the socks. I’ve also darned annoying tiny holes in t-shirt fabric. However, this works for handknitted (or machine knitted) items too, you would just use matching yarn instead of thread.
You will need:
- A holey or worn item
- Embroidery floss
- A needle. A blunt one is easier for weaving while a sharp one might be easier for creating the ”warp”.
- Something hard to keep the fabric tension and avoid stabbing yourself. It could be a darning egg/mushroom, a wooden spoon, an old fashioned light bulb, a medicine bottle, or whatever you can find.
Ingredients assembled. Start by threading the needle. I like to separate the embroidery floss and use two strands. Thinner thread will make a thinner fabric while thicker will work up quicker. Two individual strands is my happy middle ground.
I’ve stretched the sock slightly over the pill bottle, trying to keep a similar degree of stretch as it will have on my foot later. The darned patch will not stretch like the rest of the fabric when it’s done so without stretching the fabric a bit, it can feel weird.
Do not knot the thread. I go down from outside the sock and push the needle to where I want the darn to start. In the picture I started in the lower right corner and just went up and down to cover the hole and the worn area. Don’t worry about getting it perfect at this stage.
There’s another worn area in the top of the picture, but I didn’t feel like doing a huge darn… I might make a second one when/if that part wears through…
I leave the tail unknotted to be able to adjust tension. Remove any slack and uneven tension by pulling a loop up, then pulling at the neighbouring loop, and so on until you can pull one of the ends.
Ready to start weaving. You can see a bit of the starting tail to the far right. I’ve placed the working end of the thread close to the middle on the left side.
Time to start weaving. It’s easy, just go over-under-over-under across the darn. I’ve turned my needle to avoid splitting the threads with the sharp end.
Pull the thread through and anchor the thread by making one or more stitches in the fabric. Push the needle up close to where your first woven part is and weave back. Going under the strands you went over, and over the strands you went under on the last pass.
It’s easier to keep the tension when starting in the middle. I did the middle strand first, then the strands to the sides of it.
Whenever the thread starts to become too short I weave up and down in the fabric as usual and then leave the end hanging on the right side of the sock. I’ll fasten them all later.
You can use different colours for a fun effect, or for using up smaller amounts of embroidery floss.
This is the back before I started fastening ends. All the ends are on the other side.
Pull the ends to the back and prepare to start fastening…
It’s not pretty, but it works!
All done! You don’t have to make all these stitches around the darn, but I had fun with it and liked the look. If you don’t you can just make a tiny stitch at each turn.
The rows are a bit wavy since I’ve really crammed them in there. A tight weave will hold up better.
You can use a matching thread if you don’t want a colourful patch, but it is a bit harder on the eyes. I wouldn’t do black on black… White on white was annoying but doable, and pretty much invisible despite many mistakes when I couldn’t keep track of my threads 
Don’t be afraid to try! Even if the first try is ugly you will have one less holey sock. And if it’s truly awful all you’ve lost is a bit of time and embroidery floss if you were going to toss the sock anyway.
Darning has been one of those mystical chores I’ve never truly understood… until now! 
Thanks for the tutorial 
as a toy 
, and I don’t wear socks enough to make holes in them, but this is a fantastic tutorial and I feel like you could use it to do a funky patch up on jeans or the like as well! 
