Visible mending

I had no intentions of joining the visible mending club... until I bought a superfine merino wool sweater at Goodwill, and took it out of the delicate cycle with what seemed like a million holes. 

 
L'aine St. Pierre darning wool from Brooklyn Haberdashery, and the offending sweater

Oddly, the holes are just on the front of the sweater, and the sleeves. I'm not sure if you're supposed to use an embroidery hoop when darning like this, but it seemed the best choice for such a fine knit, and helped me see what I was doing. This isn't quite like darning a sock where you put something rounded under the hole. I used a mixture of techniques including an embroidery star stich, weaving, and mix of Scottish and Finnish darning. It took me a while poking on the internet to figure out how to darn, as the people currently teaching it aren't in my country and are charging for their expertise as teachers. I get it, I've paid for my share of classes when I want to learn something new, but I'm also the person who will try to figure it out for herself. 

I  had to special order the darning wool from Brooklyn Haberdashery in New York - the LYS doesn't carry darning wool, and the Amish general store doesn't have such bold colors. The sweater also presented the challenge of being super fine weight - great for spring, but not so great as the weight matches nothing in my yarn stash. The L'aine St. Pierre is more like a cotton darning thread, which is not plied into one yarn or string but wound onto the card or spool as 4 separate threads together - perfect for this project as I was able to split the strands apart like embroidery floss to more closely match the yarn gauge of the sweater.  The fiber content of the L'aine St. Pierre is similar to Regia darning wool, except Regia is a 2 ply thread. I used the Regia to darn fine gauge wool socks when I didn't have sock yarn. 

Saturday afternoon quilts

 

These were done together on the same piece of backing and batting. The one of the top was left over fabric from an I Spy quilt, and the one on the bottom I can't remember what I was thinking when I bought that fabric, except that the prints mostly went together an I liked them.  

This is the quilt I tore the border off of and started fresh with. I like it so much better now with the olive green and navy blue than the teal I had on there. The quilting thread is sort of a mauve/ plum purple, and the back is a shot cotton. I wanted wool batting for it, but there wasn't any to be had at the studio. When I said I had bamboo in it originally, the owner suggested a bamboo blend (Quilter's Dream Orient I think). This one easily has the best drape of any quilt I've done on a machine. Now I just need to bind it!

ObliGATOry cat and quilt photos