How to Repair a Hand-Knit

First: is it actually damage?

The first row is the most common and the least serious. Pilling is loose fiber ends rolled into balls on top of intact fabric - see best fabric shavers for knitwear and why yarn pills.

Fixing a run

1. Secure the bottom loop so it cannot drop further.
2. Find the ladder. The horizontal strands crossing the gap are the yarn from each dropped row, in order.
3. Use a small crochet hook. Insert it into the live loop from the front, catch the lowest ladder strand, and pull it through. Repeat, one rung at a time, working upwards.
4. Check the direction. On the knit side you work from the front; on the purl side, from the back. Get it wrong and the stitch sits twisted.
5. Put the last loop on a needle or secure it with a strand of matching yarn threaded through.

This is the same technique as fixing a dropped stitch mid-project - how to fix common knitting mistakes covers it on live knitting.

Snags

• Never cut a snag. Cutting it creates two ends and turns a pulled loop into a hole.
• Ease the excess back by gently stretching the fabric sideways on either side of the pull, working the slack outwards a little at a time.
• Or pull it through to the wrong side with a blunt needle and leave it there.
• Most snags disappear entirely after the garment is washed and the fibers relax.

Duplicate stitch, for thin patches

Before a hole forms, the fabric goes thin. Duplicate stitch - also called Swiss darning - reinforces it invisibly and is far easier than darning an actual hole.

1. Thread matching yarn on a blunt needle.
2. Follow the path of the existing stitches, tracing each V shape with a new strand laid exactly over it.
3. Work over the whole thin area plus a stitch or two of sound fabric all around.
4. The result is invisible from the front and doubles the thickness where you worked.

If you kept leftover yarn from the original project, this is what it was for. If you did not, a slightly different shade on the inside of an elbow matters far less than you think.

Darning a hole

1. Secure every live stitch around the hole first.
2. Trim nothing. Leave the loose ends - you will weave them in at the end.
3. Support the fabric over a curved object so it lies flat and you do not stitch the front to the back.
4. Lay warp threads across the hole vertically, anchored a few stitches into sound fabric on each side.
5. Weave weft threads across them horizontally, over and under, to fill the gap.
6. Weave the ends in on the wrong side.

Woven darns are strong and visible. A duplicate-stitch repair is invisible and only works where there is still fabric to follow - which is why catching a thin patch early is worth so much.

Moth damage

• Several small round holes in a wool garment is moth damage, not wear.
• Treat the whole wardrobe, not the garment. One damaged sweater means larvae somewhere.
• Freeze the garment in a sealed bag for several days before repairing it, or the problem continues.
• Then darn each hole as above.
• Store protein fibers properly afterwards - see best yarn storage solutions.

Moths eat protein fibers - wool, alpaca, mohair, cashmere, silk. Acrylic and cotton are not eaten, though moths will damage them incidentally in a blend.

Seams

A split seam looks alarming and is the easiest repair on this page. The fabric is intact; only the joining yarn has failed.

Re-seam the opened section with matching yarn, overlapping a couple of inches into the sound seam on either side so the new stitching is anchored. How to seam knitting and crochet has the technique.

When not to repair

• Widespread thinning rather than a single worn spot. The garment has reached the end.
• A yarn that has degraded - felted, brittle or shedding all over. Repairs will not hold.
• Multiple large holes in a cheap acrylic. The repair is worth more than the garment.
• Anything you never wore. Fix the fit problem instead, or pass it on.

Prevention is cheaper than any of this. Washing correctly, resting garments between wears and shaving pills early are covered in caring for hand knits.