I didn’t make this towel. I have converted our house from “standard” bath towels to these gorgeous woven cotton ones and I love them. They are big and soft, but fold down tiny and dry fast. This is the first to show any damage, so I decided to try my hand with the knitpatch. Every once in a while I get suckered by advertising (don’t we all) and the knitpatch purchase is one of those. I’ve had it for at least 6 months and this was my first try actually using it.
I love the idea of visible mending, but I rarely have clothing damage that seems to work with the idea. Largely this is because I wear mostly jersey shirts, so they tend to weather well then kind of disintegrate all at once. Similar for jeans, though I do have a few pairs that I might try mending soon. The knitpatch basically just helps your make a little woven section to cover a hole. Not exactly magic, and I’m not sure it saved any time at all, but it was fun flipping the little hooks back and forth, so I guess there’s that. You’ve also pretty limited in hole size. Anyway, here’s the whole process.
Here’s the hole with thumb for scale.
You can see there are many threads still spanning the gap.
You put the wooden disk behind the hole, the metal thing snugs in on top, and a hair band holds it all in place.
This is my design consultant helping me pick colors of embroidery floss.
Then you secure the first color and run vertically across the hole, small stitches at the bottom, around a hook at the top, secure at the other end.
Now secure the other color at the bottom corner, over-under across the vertical threads, make a little stitch at the side, flip the hook the other way, and over-under back across, small stitch, etc. The hooks make it a little easier to get the threads in the over-under pattern, I suppose.
Be sure to squish down the rows as you go so they stay tight.
When you can’t fit any more rows, remove the hooks and stitch each vertical set in place across the top. Then weave in all thread ends and trim.
I like how it came out!
This is the back. I’m not sure if I should do the back also or what, since I think this type of mend is usually used for one-sided things. For now I’ll leave it and see what happens with use.
