Repair

Even with the greatest care, well-loved knits are subject to a little wear and tear. That’s why we’ve put together a Care & Repair Kit to help give your sweaters, scarves, cushions, creatures and many more knitted items a new lease of life.

Each kit contains four knitted lambswool patches, two skeins of lambswool yarn and a darning needle which can be used to repair holes or worn patches, plus a wool comb to defuzz your knits.

We’ve also created a series of how-to videos to teach you how to repair your knits. You can use the contents of our Care & Repair Kit, or materials you already have at home.

How to defuzz a sweater

This is one of the easiest ways to take care of your knitwear and to remove the little pills that commonly appear on high friction areas – like under the arms or on the cuffs of a sweater. You can easily banish these bobbles by using a wool comb or defuzzer.

How to strengthen worn areas with duplicate stitch

Duplicate stitch is best used to strengthen worn areas or small snags that may get worse over time, but can also be used as a purely decorative effect.

You’ll need a darning needle and a length of yarn – we recommend one about the same length as your arm. You may also find it helpful to use an embroidery hoop (we use one of these in our video) to add tension to the area you’re going to work on, but you can also use a darning mushroom, a tennis ball, or even an orange!

How to darn a hole in a sweater

You can use darning to create a woven patch across most types of holes in a knitted fabric. To darn a hole, you’ll need a darning needle, a length of yarn, and a method of creating tension. To prove you don’t need any fancy tools, we’re using an orange to create tension for the mend in this video, and securing it under the hole using a hair scrunchie!

We also show you how to create a near-invisible mend using the Swiss darning technique. This method is a little trickier, so we’ve put together a few additional instructions and diagrams here to help you along the way.

How to patch a hole in a sweater

One of our favourite ways to mend holes is to cover them with a patch. Our Care & Repair Kits contain four small patches made from our knitted offcuts, but you can use fabric patches – like our Veg and Club House Patches – or anything else you might have at home. In this video, we’re using the blanket stitch to secure them.

We’ve also included a simple sashiko technique for attaching woollen patches.

A big thank you to Kim Norrie of HANDCRAFTED for creating this series of videos. You can watch more of her magic on her YouTube channel here.

If you’re looking for advice on how to clean your lambswool sweaters, accessories, cushions and throws, check our our top tips here.

We also offer a repair service, or Creature Clinic, for well-loved Donna Wilson creatures in need of a little tender loving care – find out more about this service here.