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There’s a lot of ways that something can go wrong with textiles, but I think they can be summed up like this:

- Seams come undone, or things that are sewn on, like buttons, fall off.

This is a matter of redoing the original stitching.

- a stain that just won’t come out.

This is a great candidate for embroidery, or else sewing something on top of it, like a patch or some beads or something else decorative.

- the fabric becomes worn but doesn’t yet have a hole.
- there’s a hole.

If possible, it’s great to make a mend before a hole appears. Otherwise, if you can, the sooner you mend a hole, the less likely it is to grow and become a really large one. The idiom “a stitch in time saves nine” is for this exact situation.

Darning (or otherwise making some kind of fabric in the hole), patches, and embroidery are all candidates for these situations.

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The next thing is to consider what’s being mended and what I hope to use it for in future.

Do I want to hide that it’s been mended? Can I? Mending can in fact be decorative. There’s also something to be said for making mending visible as a reminder that it’s better to make clothes last as long as possible.

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If it’s something I’m just going to wear for doing yardwork or the like, or just around the house, I’m going to go for sturdy but not beautiful (except maybe as practice).

I do wear visible mending out and about.

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If I look at something that can’t be mended, then I might turn it into something else: patches for other clothing, patchwork quilts, rag rugs, absorbent rags to use instead of paper towels.

For knitting/crochet, I might unravel it to reuse the yarn (including for darning!), or I might deliberately shrink it if possible. Fulled fabric is useful— I’ve used the results to make really effective tea cosies. I’ve made elbow patches for other sweaters. It could be sewn into bags.

But I digress.

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There’s two versions of my favorite knitting mend. Duplicate stitch is good for places where you’ve got a worn spot or a stain you don’t like.

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-duplicate-stitch-2116380

They’re showing it just as embroidery, but when your knitting is getting thin but hasn’t got a hole yet, it’s a great way to make a patch. Just make sure to make the edges of your patch go all the way onto the part of the fabric that’s in good shape.

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Swiss darning creates the same effect in places where there’s a hole.

Here’s the TL;DR link: http://usingonepairofhands.blogspot.com/2011/07/invisible-mend.html [usingonepairofhands.blogspot.com]

I learned from a much wordier tutorial: http://www.hjsstudio.com/darn.html
It uses a slightly different method for making a framework for the stitches to sit on while making them in thin air.

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(More later, not just knitting-focused!)

Here’s an article about repairing a crochet tablecloth that looks pretty good.

https://pieceworkmagazine.com/repairing-mamas-crocheted-tablecloth/

If I search YouTube for crochet repair, I find a number of possibilities covering different situations, but I’m not a video person, so can’t make recommendations. If you’ve got a favorite, let me know and I’ll tack it onto the thread later.

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I liked this article showing how to repair holes in any kind of fabric by filling them in with crochet:

https://craftingagreenworld.com/articles/how-to-make-patches-crochet/

(The link to the detailed tutorial is broken; I hope the images here are inspiring!)

Note: you could do the same thing by picking up stitches, and knitting in the round inwards, decreasing stitches until you get to the middle, like the top of a hat.

I bet nalbinding/needle looping would also work.

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@Harena great mending!