On our clothes, cuffs and hems are high wear points that often start to look thin and frayed - presenting yet another visible mending opportunity!
Darning is one option here. A woven darn does not stretch, which is important to keep in mind when you are repairing knitwear that does stretch. I have some tips to help you maintain the proper fit for your garment when mending the edge of something knit, which I will cover next week!
Let's start with an easier non-stretch example. This well-travelled pair of Beach Bum shorts by Picnicwear started fraying at the hem.
If you look carefully, you can see a detail that I really love about Dani's design: she uses the natural selvage of the towel for the front hem of these shorts, which to me makes it really clear how mich thought and care goes into each piece. When she asked me for advice on how to fix this very well-loved pair, I had just the idea.
Let's rebuild the selvage with a woven darn!
I pulled out my XL Work Surface for this one, and was happy to see that it spanned most of the way across the whole bottom hem. I warped up just four hooks on my Swift Darning Loom with pale purple embroidery floss held double.
We decided to go with a two-tone purple design for the repair, so I doubled up the embroidery floss on both the warps and the wefts in order to get a bolder checkerboard look.
The width of 4 hooks brought the patch well into the strong, main fabric of the shorts. On the right side, I added an extra stitch at the edge to give it a second anchor point for added strength.
On the edge, where the selvage had completely worn away, I just flipped my hooks and passed the needle back in the opposite direction.
Here's one last work-in-progress shot of the whole table Dani and I were working at - I also mended a bunch of sweaters as part of a collaboration project we did together! You can see she is in the middle of placing applique flowers on a pink sweater I had already mended. See our whole collection here on Picnicwear.com!