4:31pm Tuesday 5th August 2008
By Telegraph & Argus
If your clothes develop holes or begin to fray a little at the edges, the modern way of dealing with such problems is to throw them away and buy replacements. But that wasn’t how it was done in earlier generations and it might not be the way it’s done in the future now most of us are having to tighten our belts.
1 If you find your toe poking through a hole in your sock, that doesn’t necessarily means it’s ready for the bin as darning can extend the sock’s life. First you need some darning wool in as near a matching colour as you can find. Once every suburb had a draper’s shop, but nowadays a market is probably your best bet. You need to stretch the sock over something to keep the hole open (a jam jar might do). Thread your darning needle and pull the wool from one facing edge of the hole to the other, back and forth, creating a warp. Then work across between the other facing edges, forming the weft by working under and over the strands of the warp.
2 Shirt collar worn and frayed? If it’s one of those with built-in stiffeners or slots for removable stiffeners to be inserted into, you’ve little choice other than to throw it away. But if it’s a soft collar, or a button-down one, unpick it from the shirt by the seam above the top button hole, turn it over, and sew it back on again.
3 If a jacket or sweater is getting thin at the elbows, look around for some oval, leather-or-fabric elbow pads (markets again) and sew them on. So what if it makes you look like an old-fashioned geography teacher? It’ll defer the expense of buying a replacement garment.
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