Darned brooches

Since Hikaru’s Instagram live event I’ve been trying to make my own macaron brooch inspired by the ones in her latest book, Beyond Darning: Creative mending techniques. There are several kinds of project in the book, from patches and soft brooches, and then these round ones, named after those lovely French macarons. Hikaru uses ‘moulds’ and unable to get hold of any I’ve used jam jar lids, which seems to work out okay. Though not nearly as lovely as the examples in the book, I’m rather pleased with my attempt, though the best thing was spending the time making, thinking about all those small decisions, that helps you forget anything else that’s on your mind.
I used an old swatch that I had knitted in linen, and attached it to a square of fabric. Once I had darned it with a square darn, some reverse parrallel honeycomb stitch and French knots, I stretched it over a jar lid with some woollen stuffing. The back will be a circle of card wrapped with some extra linen fabric to be sewn on the back. I haven’t quite got around to this bit yet ☺️

We have a workshop coming up where we’ll be making patches and brooches inspired by the book and teaching the basic darning techniques. The workshop will be on Friday 8 Nov at Trinity Rooms, Stroud. There are a few tickets left. There’s a talk in the evening also part of Stroud Book Festival, with Kate Fletcher and Lynn Setterington talking about their work and their new books.