What You’ll Need:
A sock that’s seen better days A darning needle A darning egg or alternative Yarn Scissors
Once you have gathered your materials, let’s get started. For this tutorial, we’ll be using a baseball bat. It has a rounded top and can be positioned between your knees to encourage good posture while you’re darning on the couch. You could also use maracas or large plastic Easter egg. Slip your sock over your darning object and let’s get stitching. Insert your needle about 1/8" away from the hole in the sock, or outside of the weak area of the sock. Stitch around the hole, including the very thin, weak areas around the hole. An easy way to do this is to weave the needle into the fabric first, then pull through to make a series of stitches at once. Next, we will start stitching inside the circle. At the hole, make a long stitch that spans the entire width of the hole, as shown. Later, you will weave through these strings to create a new patch of fabric for the sock. Make these rows of long strings as close together as possible. After each long stitch, continue the row to the edge of the stitched circle. Next, finish stitching the rows. Next, we will start to stitch columns. Sew over the rows until you get to the hole. Here, you will weave the yarn over and under the long threads. After weaving, stitch to the edge of your circle to finish that column. Next, we will continue to weave over the hole. Repeat this process until the entire hole is covered. Remember to make your stitches close together over the hole, even scooting them together with the edge of your needle if you need to. The goal here is to replace the missing fabric. Your hole is covered and you are almost done. Let’s finish up. There are no knots involved in a darned sock because knots just feel terrible on the bottom of a sock. We will finish by weaving the extra yarn into the fabric of the sock, maybe around the stitched circle or by creating another row. Take out your darning egg (or baseball bat, as the case may be) and clip the yarn on the inside of the sock, or clip it on the outside and tuck the loose yarn in.
